Vets on Patrol Meyer
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Left: Michael “Lewis Arthur” Meyer in an April 15 livestream from the Oklahoma Capitol building. Right: An ICE agent in New Bedford, Mass., uses an axe to smash a car window during an apprehension of a Guatemalan immigrant on April 14. (Screenshots via YouTube)
Social media posts have been falsely claiming that a man with connections to Arizona and far-right militias was the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent who smashed a car’s window with an axe to apprehend a Guatemalan immigrant. But that man has not been hired by ICE and is currently in Oklahoma spreading conspiracy theories there.
Michael “Lewis Arthur” Meyer is the founder of a group known as Veterans on Patrol which has been involved with a number of militia activities along the southern border often with a QAnon theme.
Users on BlueSky and X, formerly Twitter, have been claiming that Meyer is an ICE agent who was seen breaking the window of a vehicle to arrest a Guatemalan immigrant woman as she was waiting for her attorney.
The Arizona Mirror found that Meyer was posting videos of himself in Oklahoma at the time of the incident in Massachusetts. Meyer has been making videos of himself at the Oklahoma state Capitol telling staff of lawmakers that he intends to “destroy” what he claims is “military weather manipulation” technology.
In an email to the Mirror, Meyer confirmed that he has been living in Oklahoma and said he does not work for ICE.
And ICE “vehemently” denied the claims that Meyer works for the agency in any capacity.
“The officer recorded making an arrest in New Bedford, Mass. is not militia leader Lewis Arthur,” an ICE spokesman said in an emailed statement to the Mirror. “The rumors circulating on social media that ICE Boston employed a militia leader from Arizona to make arrests in New England are not only false, but they are also inflammatory and place the safety of federal officers in jeopardy.”
ICE would not release the name of the officer seen in the video, and would only confirm that “he is a federal law enforcement officer who has worked with ICE to help keep New England communities safe for years.”
Meyer believes in the debunked chemtrail conspiracy theory that has been overtaking many state legislatures. His Telegram, a social media channel favored by the far-right for allowing hate speech and graphic content, if full of conspiratorial creeds and allusions to violence towards the alleged weather manipulation technology in Oklahoma.
Meyer’s group has long engaged in these sorts of antics and “operations.”
In 2018, his group found a homeless encampment and began spreading unfounded claims of sex trafficking and last year claimed that Hurricane Helene was created by the United States military.
Meyer also has a criminal record which includes damaging and stealing water meant for migrants along the border left by humanitarian groups in Arizona, disorderly conduct and trespassing at a cement factory he believed was part of a QAnon-style conspiracy.
Journalist Jessica Pishko also confirmed on X that she had recently seen Meyer in Oklahoma.
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NO LNX
'Veterans on Patrol': Inside MAGA's new assault on reality and bizarre conspiracy theory
Thom Hartmann July 12, 2025
In Oklahoma, a domestic militia calling itself “Veterans on Patrol” is systematically targeting weather radars. Their leader, Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, claims the military is controlling the weather through Doppler radar systems and that these machines are part of a divine affront — a “weather weapon” — that is “mocking God Himself.”
He’s encouraging his followers to sabotage these radars under an operation he calls “Leaning Tower.” This isn’t just fringe paranoia: it’s part of a growing anti-reality insurgency that threatens our democracy itself.
Let’s be blunt: this is insanity. Not just in its content, but in its consequences. And yet, it’s not isolated. It’s one of many conspiracy-fueled campaigns that now animate parts of American life, often backed by violence or intimidation. From QAnon to flat-earth nonsense to vaccine “skeptics” now within the Food and Drug Administration, we’re watching a dangerous erosion of truth, a collapse of shared facts, and an outright assault on the institutions that protect life and liberty.
What’s happening here isn’t just about weather radars: it’s about reality itself.
When people are told not to believe their own eyes, not to trust scientists, doctors, journalists, or even the National Weather Service, society begins to crack. And the people exploiting those cracks — including some of the Trump administration’s most senior officials (see: Bob Kennedy and Stephen Miller, among others) — know exactly what they’re doing.
Veterans on Patrol isn’t just anti-science or anti-government; it’s anti-democracy. It joins a growing list of extremist groups peddling lies and hatred: anti-immigrant, anti-Indigenous, antisemitic, misogynist, anti-Catholic, anti-Muslim. It wraps its destruction in the flag and cloaks its violence in religion. And when Meyer boasts about being responsible for “a lot more than” taking down a radar, we’d be fools not to take him seriously. Oklahoma, after all, remembers Timothy McVeigh.
This latest attack rendered a critical radar system “instantly obsolete,” according to meteorologist David Payne. That radar was designed to save lives, particularly in tornado-prone Oklahoma. When it’s destroyed, people will die. Period. This is not free speech: this is domestic terrorism.
But here’s the deeper issue: this attack is only a symptom, not the disease. The disease is the deliberate poisoning of the American mind with fantasy and fear by a network and system of media and social media owned by anti-democracy rightwing billionaires and filled with Russian trolls. And when truth dies, democracy soon follows.
Because democracy — as Thomas Jefferson so accurately pointed out (“Whenever the people are well informed, they may be trusted with their own government”) — depends on an educated public operating on the basis of shared truths and actual facts.
You can’t have a functioning republic if half the country believes extreme weather is a “liberal weapon” and the other half knows it’s the result of an atmosphere warmed by fossil fuel emissions. You can’t govern when reality itself is disputed. And you certainly can’t maintain civil peace when people are being radicalized into acts of violence based on complete and utter delusion.
The fossil-fuel-billionaire-funded radical right’s war on truth isn’t new, but it’s accelerating. When lies are repeated often enough, they become gospel to those who want to believe them.
Right-wing media outlets, extremist influencers, and opportunistic Republicans have learned — as Josef Goebbels famously preached — that a lie can be more powerful than the truth when it aligns with grievance, fear, and identity and is repeated often enough.
The problem isn’t just gullibility. It’s that these lies are weaponized. And when they take hold, facts become negotiable, science becomes suspect, and even saving people from storms becomes controversial.
Just look at how the “mainstream media” consistently omits from their reporting on Trump’s tariffs that they’re a clear violation of the Constitution and was explicitly called that in an unanimous decision by the US Trade Court, as Robert Hubbell points out so eloquently.
Or when the media ignores the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, and 14th amendment violations of ICE’s random, masked, warrantless arrests and incarceration of brown-skinned people, including those with Green Cards at the “Alligator Alcatraz” concentration camp, along with those with full, court-ordered permission to be here in America.
What does this mean for democracy?
A shattered consensus on truth makes informed voting impossible. If voters can’t agree on basic facts — like whether the atmosphere is heating up or whether a vaccine works — how can they make rational decisions at the ballot box?
The weaponization of delusion breeds violence. Just like the January 6th attack on our Capitol, these radar attacks are fueled by conspiracy and rage. They don’t just damage property, they destabilize the rule of law.
When truth is optional, tyranny becomes inevitable. Autocrats thrive in the fog of misinformation. The more confused and divided a people are, the easier they are to control, thus the daily Trump Reality Show.
Public trust collapses. Scientists, educators, journalists, and public servants all become suspect. That vacuum gets filled by cult leaders, armed militias, and political demagogues.
:{:{Democracy becomes unrecognizable. Without a shared sense of reality, debate becomes pointless, compromise becomes impossible, and elections become battlegrounds instead of ways to determine a rational direction for our shared future.}:
So what do we do?
We fight back with truth. Unapologetically. Loudly. Persistently.
We stand up for science. For journalism. For civic education. For basic decency.
We hold platforms accountable that spread lies, tweak their algorithms secretly to promote anti-democracy messages, and reject the persistent “mainstream media” cowardice of both-sidesism. There aren’t “two sides” to facts. There is reality and there are lies.
We support platforms, networks, media, newsletters, programs, writers, speakers, politicians, and movements that promote the truth and push back against the creeping fascism that is rapidly overtaking our nation.
So we must loudly and persistently call this out for what it is: an attempt — which has so far been successful at destroying democracy in nations like Russia, Hungary, and Turkey — to engage in social and political sabotage. It’s radicalism, a form of domestic terrorism whose target is democracy itself.
And it’s time to say: enough.
Because without truth, we don’t just lose the weather forecast.
We lose our nation.
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WIKI 7 25
Veterans on Patrol (VOP)[1] is a far-right extremist[1][2][3] anti-government militia founded by Michael "Lewis Arthur" Meyer in 2015.[4][5][6] The group primarily spreads conspiracy theories on social media and conducts vigilante patrols against purported human trafficking on the Mexico–United States border.[5][1] The group attracted national attention in 2025 after threatening to attack radar stations run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration claiming they were secretly being used for weather modification.[7][2][3]
History and aims
Veterans on Patrol was founded in Pima County, Arizona[4] in 2015 with the initial aim of supporting military veterans.[5] Despite the name "Veterans on Patrol", its founder, Michael "Lewis Arthur" Meyer, is not a veteran.[1] Since 2018, the activities of the organization shifted away from the initially stated goals and towards vigilantism[1] against purported anti-human trafficking activities on the Mexico–United States border.[5] The Guardian described such operations as originating from Meyer's "conspiracy narratives fueled by his apocalyptic Christian nationalist beliefs".[1] The group is known for embedding in communities to "launch missions related to migrants or purported child trafficking".[8]
The philosophy shared by the group includes antisemitic, anti-Mormon, anti-Catholic and anti-indigenous views.[4] Members also embrace the disproven QAnon conspiracy theory.[5] The organization is known for using social media to spread unsubstantiated claims about activities along the border,[1] and in 2019 had a Facebook page with approximately 70,000 followers.[6]
In 2018, the group labelled a homeless encampment as a child sex-trafficking location, although authorities found no evidence to support the claim.[9][4][5] In 2018 and 2019, Meyer was arrested several times for trespassing and other charges regarding his groups unauthorized presence on private and public lands. During this time, the group maintained an active presence in southern Arizona during this period, although with diminished public attention.[1] The group has been criticized by law enforcement agencies for interfering with legitimate investigations and potentially compromising real criminal cases.[1]
In 2020, the group destroyed several migrant watering station in Arizona's Pima county claiming they were used by cartel scouts. In response, the Pima county sheriff's office put out an arrest warrant for Meyer over the alleged vandalism.[1]
In 2024, the group attracted controversy after an operation in Spokane, Washington where the group's second-in-command, Shawna Martin, lives. The organization made false claims of trafficking activities near homeless encampments, and were accused by local authorities and homeless advocacy groups of harassing and filming individuals without their consent.[1]
The group claimed that Hurricane Helene was "an act of war perpetuated(sic) by the United States Military"; a "land grab" responsible for "murdering hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans".[8] It readily spread misinformation about the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season, promoting multiple false claims that the storm was intentionally created by the military and said it would destroy military equipment in the area.[1]
In 2025, the group threatened to attack weather radars run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration claiming that the radar sites were secretly being used for weather modification.[7]
See also
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azcentral
anti-government group with Arizona ties takes credit for weather radar sabotage
Portrait of Richard RuelasRichard Ruelas
Arizona Republic
Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, leader of the anti-government group Veterans On Patrol, took credit for the sabotage of a TV station's weather radar system in Oklahoma City.
Meyer believes the military and media use radar systems to control weather and considers destroying them "God's work."
Meyer previously led a homeless veterans aid group in Arizona and made unsubstantiated claims about child sex trafficking at an abandoned cement plant.
A man who, years ago, became convinced a child sex-trafficking ring was operating at an abandoned cement plant in Tucson has moved to Oklahoma and found a new target: radar systems he believes the military and media use to control the weather.
Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, who leads the anti-government group Veterans On Patrol, claimed credit for the July 6 sabotage of the weather radar system of KWTV-TV, Channel 9, in Oklahoma City. Meyer did not vandalize the station’s radar system himself, but had posted pleas on his group’s Telegram channel asking for others to join his cause.
Security footage posted by the television station showed a man tossing a bag over a chain-link fence, climbing it and damaging a power supply. The video then showed the man spray painting over the lens of a security camera.
Oklahoma City police arrested a man on July 8, believed to be the person in the video. He was initially held on unrelated misdemeanor charges, but felony counts were added July 10, including causing damage to a "critical infrastructure facility." A department spokesperson did not confirm whether that was the television station's weather equipment.
Meyer, in an interview with a reporter with the TV station, said his group was "absolutely" responsible for the act.
It is not clear how many people are associated with Meyer's group, outside of his social media following. In group posts on Telegram, Meyer has spoken of an unknown number of aligned "Brothers and Sisters."
Speaking to The Arizona Republic on July 10, Meyer said he and those in his movement were doing nothing wrong.
“Eliminating directed energy weapons that are embedded in our infrastructure is not going to harm a single American,” he said. “It will take away a loaded weapon pointed at the American people.”
Before moving to Oklahoma, Meyer caused a stir in southern Arizona by calling law enforcement to investigate an abandoned cement plant where he was convinced children were being sex trafficked. Police found nothing.
Meyer, on the Veterans On Patrol channel on Telegram, has posted about the government using chemical weapons and vowing to destroy equipment. But the postings took on a more urgent tone after the July 4 flooding in central Texas. The sudden swelling of the Guadalupe River has killed more than 120 people, including dozens of children.
Meyer said in postings that the U.S. military intentionally caused the floods.
Meyer, in a Telegram post on July 6, showed a yellow flyer posted on a chain-link fence with a radar tower in the background. The flyer said the radar tower was “targeted for elimination by victims of U.S. military weather experimentation.”
The flyer gave a name to the project: Operation Leaning Tower. It also listed Meyer’s name and phone number, inviting anyone to contact him “with any questions or concerns.”
Two days after the television station's radar system was vandalized, Meyer posted a video of himself walking into the Oklahoma City Police Department headquarters. At the front desk, he identified himself as “the one commanding the operations,” according to the video.
Two men came to the lobby to speak with Meyer, according to his video, but did not appear to take his statement or question him about his claim of responsibility.
In the lobby, Meyer again asked his audience to join his group’s efforts in destroying radar towers.
“You’re doing God’s work if you’re eliminating the military’s capabilities of playing God with the weather,” he told his viewers. His Telegram channel has about 6,600 subscribers. The video of him in the police lobby had been viewed more than 2,200 times as of July 10.
Group previously aided homeless veterans in Arizona
Eight years ago, Meyer lived in Arizona. The Veterans On Patrol group was known then for starting camps that offered aid to homeless veterans in the Phoenix area.
That effort moved to Tucson. In May 2018, Meyer became convinced about trafficking at the abandoned cement plant. After nine days of occupation on the site, Meyer was arrested for trespassing.
Meyer told The Republic he spent time along the Arizona border with Mexico before moving to Oklahoma. He described himself as a “homeless transient.” Videos on his Telegram channel show him near a tent with his dog.
Meyer said he would like to focus on helping veterans living on the street, but continued to find other, more pressing matters.
“I’d love to do good things,” he said. “But now I have to go destroy equipment because the military will not stop violating (federal law.)”
The chief meteorologist for the television station, David Payne, said the radar only monitors the weather.
“I wish we could turn it on and say, 'Oh, let's make that tornado go away,’ but our weather radar and all of the weather radars in the U.S. are built strictly to inform and warn the public, and to keep the public safe,” he said in an interview that aired on the station.
EPA creates websites to challenge conspiracy theories about weather
Meyer has planned his Operation Leaning Tower, targeting radar towers for months. He posted photos of the yellow fliers announcing the targeting of certain towers in April. That same month, he posted videos of himself walking through the state Capitol in Oklahoma, trying to speak to staffers of lawmakers and the governor about his plan.
In May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned employees at the National Weather Service of the threats, according to emails obtained by the Washington Post.
The emails, according to the Post, suggested maintaining "increased vigilance when at or near radar sites. Out of an abundance of caution, we are asking all regions to notify their field offices and radar technicians to maintain increased vigilance when at or near radar sites,” NOAA’s central office informed leadership across the country in a May 1 memo, which advised weather service staff to notify local law enforcement of any suspicious behavior.
On July 10, the Environmental Protection Agency created two websites that debunked the notion that the government was working to control the weather, including through “chemtrail” emissions from airplanes.
The websites were part of an effort by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to take a hard look at the conspiracy theories. “Instead of simply dismissing these questions and concerns as baseless conspiracies, we’re meeting them head-on,” Zeldin said in a video posted on X.
The man arrested by Oklahoma City police on July 8 was accused of violating a protective order and damaging property. But a spokesperson for the department said those accusations had nothing to do with the damage to the television station’s radar, though the man was considered a suspect in that crime.
On July 10, the website for the Oklahoma City Detention Center showed he was being held on additional felony counts, including one for trespass and damage to a critical infrastructure facility.
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A spokesperson for the Oklahoma City Police Department, Capt. Valerie Littlejohn did not immediately return an email on July 10 asking whether the new accusations involved the TV station.
Littlejohn said investigators had not determined whether that man was associated with Veterans On Patrol.
On that group’s Telegram channel, Meyer called the man a “patriot.”
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:{:{SPLc}:
Veterans on Patrol (VOP) is an antigovernment militia located in Pima County, Arizona. The founder, Michael “Lewis Arthur” Meyer, is a Christian nationalist who rallies hard-right extremists and conspiracy theorists around the issue of immigration and encourages vigilantism.
:{:{As an organization, Veterans on Patrol advances initiatives that are founded on common antigovernment and anti-immigrant ideas. The group has also pushed anti-Indigenous, antisemitic, anti-Catholic and anti-Mormon falsehoods. VOP activists have incorporated QAnon conspiracy theories into their activities as well, including previous operation of two camps in Arizona — one in Three Points and one in Sasabe — under the premise that they are rescuing children from satanic pedophiles who are trafficking them for sex, human sacrifice and organ harvesting.}:
Even after having their conspiracy theories debunked by law enforcement and media, Meyer and VOP continue diverting attention away from legitimate organizations and law enforcement agencies combating human trafficking. According to VOP statements, group members believe their activities are sanctioned by God, and they therefore don’t have to comply with state or federal laws.}:
In Their Own Words
“These criminals we are standing against are far worse than the Cartel … They wear Sheriff Deputy Uniforms, Police Uniforms, Military Uniforms, and now Undercover Uniforms.” — VOP Telegram, Nov. 5, 2023
“We are encouraged by the fact that we have the hardened criminals, the very elements of society who will stand up and fight back. We’re blessed to have them by our side.” — Michael “Lewis Arthur” Meyer, VOP Telegram, Nov. 4, 2023
“Of course the Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints instruct their Members to inject themselves with a Bioweapon created with Aborted Fetal Matter with the technology to alter the Image that God imprinted on us … HIS Image. 80 million in Pfizer assets provide the Satanic Leaders incentive. Following the money of ALL Religions these days shows their investment in Globalists, who are compromised of Satanic Pedovores [sic] devouring innocent Children for sacrificial purposes and their ‘Fountain of Youth’ known better as Adrenochrome. God sees an overwhelming majority of the Mormon Church Members as Lost Sheep following their False Prophets. Satan provides this Cult plenty of wealth and power, and their Members do not question the Blasphemy taught by their Founder Joseph Smith, who was a Free Mason known for ‘Tall Tales.’” — VOP Telegram, March 20, 2022
“Not only do we continue permitting the slaughter of our own Children in Abortion Sacrificial Centers…
Not only do we permit altering our Children’s DNA with Globalist Vaccinations that kill and sterilize…
Not only do we permit Government Agencies like CPS to abduct Children from their Parents…
Not only do we permit the Captivity, Rape, and Abuse of Migrant Children being trafficked by Catholic Charity Services…
We now permit Afghan Pedophiles to bring their Child Rape Victims for further Abuse on our own Soil…
Americans will reap horrible consequences for continuing to allow God’s Children to be defiled and abused.
I ask everyone to Pray for the Children… and I ask my Father to destroy this Nation for perpetuating evil equal to Sodom and Gomorrah.
Americans will not fight for these Children… May our Father in Heaven bring His Righteous Judgement upon this Satanic Nation claiming to be under Him
PREPARE YOUR FAMILIES.” — VOP Telegram, Sept. 15, 2021
“Our nation refused to repent, and his judgment is already upon us, yet the Sheeple continue to play the fiddle while America burns. Those who will NOT accept the vaccines, social distancing, masks, mandates or the incoming global currency & mark to seal it all are being asked to immediately cast off the world and join us in preparation.” — VOP Telegram, Aug. 18, 2021
“Border Patrol they have their hands tied. They give these individuals fourth amendment rights for all purposes when they cross. Well, when we intercept them and we find their phones, they’ll throw their phones, they’ll hide their phones, we’ll get their phones. We don’t have to get a warrant to open their phones, we’re not law enforcement, we’re private citizens and we take that intel, sift through it and try to give whatever border patrol needs to get a handle on the situation and most of the time they know what we’re reporting.” — Michael “Lewis Arthur” Meyer, in an interview with Women Fighting for America posted to Facebook, Aug. 9, 2021
“We also know that the Biden administration is ten steps ahead of the conservatives because Biden’s been flying them in. Now what they’ve done is they’ve totally played America. Biden right now is rescuing child victims, they’re being abused, they’re having their organs harvested, being sexually abused, being recycled, now Americans and conservatives are screaming about the illegal problem; Biden is going to be able to show the world all the child victims and all the rape victims that they are trying to save and get out of the cartel’s hands, even though this government worked with this whole operation and this invasion to take place.” — Michael “Lewis Arthur” Meyer, in an interview with Women Fighting for America posted to Facebook, Aug. 9, 2021
“Global currency will accompany the Mark and the world will see WEALTH being created instead of spiritual health being destroyed. Nearly all those who wore a mask or conceded to taking anti-fertility vaccinations with DNA altering nano technology created from unborn murdered babies in the womb will take the Mark. Americans crave wealth, power, and personal gain… The numbers of socialists, Marxists, and communist people needed to ensure Christians are overwhelmed and eventually separated from persecution have already poured across our border and continue to do so.” — VOP Telegram, May 20, 2021
“There are unknown number of stash houses across the Tohono O’odham Indian Reservation where humans, weapons, drugs, and money are transported continuously across border lines. Several locations by our reporting. Child trafficking layups and rape trees are concentrated mostly on the reservation or on routes originating from the reservation.” — VOP Telegram, Jan. 23, 2021
Background
Veterans on Patrol (VOP) is an antigovernment militia organization based in Pima County, Arizona. Over the years, the group’s QAnon and related conspiracy theories have driven members to engage in what many see as clear harassment of migrants and humanitarian workers in purported search of Mexican cartels, pedophiles, human traffickers and child sex rings.
As an organization, VOP is designated a militia by the SPLC for its internal hierarchical structure, past firearm field-training exercises, and paramilitary-style activities its members believe are enforcing national security measures. Throughout the years, members have also been spotted carrying firearms while they patrol the desert for cartel hideout spots and for migrants crossing through the region. The group also engages in coordinated harassment campaigns against humanitarian and immigrants’ rights groups.
The organization is staunchly opposed to both state and federal law enforcement agencies such as U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the FBI, the Pima County Attorney’s Office, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and Child Protective Services (CPS). The hostility toward such agencies stems from VOP’s belief in conspiracy theories alleging that children are disappearing while being processed through government agencies. Particular animus is directed at such groups as USFWS, the FBI and the Pima County Attorney’s Office, agencies that have questioned the legitimacy of VOP’s beliefs that elected representatives and government agencies are helping traffic children. On social media, VOP founder Michael “Lewis Arthur” Meyer argues his group’s activities don’t have to adhere to state or federal laws because VOP’s antics are sanctioned by God.
Meyer is a Christian nationalist with extreme views on the role of Christianity in society. On Telegram, Meyer’s belief that government agents are trafficking, sexually abusing and kidnapping children has led him to call for God to “destroy this nation perpetuating evil.” The false narratives that drive Meyer and the rest of VOP have led to posts on social media calling the U.S. a “Satanic Nation.” On the surface, Meyer appears to be obsessed with several issues, including violent sex crimes against children, drug trafficking, immigration and pushing back against government agencies such as CBP and CPS. Underneath his obsession is the belief that satanic forces are at work corrupting the nation from within.
Not to be confused with everyday Christianity, Meyer’s Christian nationalist beliefs push hateful falsehoods about immigrants, Native Americans, the Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) and government officialdom. Christian nationalism is best characterized as a cultural framework where a very specific type of Christianity and American identity merge, leading to the belief that the U.S. is a Christian nation founded on a divinely inspired Constitution.
Meyer’s worldview has also led him to make baseless accusations about the Tohono O’odham Nation Reservation in Southern Arizona. In line with other Indigenous reservations throughout the U.S., the Tohono O’odham reservation limits access to some non-tribal members, such as Meyer and other VOP members. As a result, VOP’s Telegram channel has continually claimed the reservation is a hotspot for human and drug trafficking. The hostility appears to stem from the fact that the group can’t freely encroach on tribal land.
Likewise, VOP has also targeted the LDS. Meyer’s adherence to Christian nationalist beliefs has led VOP to coin the term “Mormon Mafia” to describe the LDS. In addition to allegations of kidnapping, Meyer has referred to LDS followers as “lost sheep following their false prophets,” and he likes to describe the religious group as a “cult.” Conspiracy theories are intertwined with antigovernment rhetoric. In some cases, VOP falsely claims the LDS instructed its followers to take COVID-19 vaccines while receiving an incentive from Pfizer, a vaccine manufacturer. Meyer and VOP have labeled Pfizer a “globalist” organization, arguing it secretly engages in child-sacrifice rituals in search of the fountain of youth.
VOP started out in 2015 as an initiative to draw attention to the number of veteran suicides each year, but it has slowly evolved into a group of far-right vigilantes vandalizing lifesaving hydration stations for migrants traversing the desert. The membership of VOP has gradually snowballed into a conspiracy-driven group of extremists who brazenly detain migrants and track minors crossing into Arizona. Their activities include vandalism, doxing campaigns and online propaganda that has attracted other far-right extremist groups and individuals including white nationalists, Proud Boys, anti-vaccine individuals and Jan. 6 insurrectionists.
Origins
Veterans on Patrol founder Michael “Lewis Arthur” Meyer is an antigovernment prepper turned militia leader. Antigovernment preppers are individuals who engage in stockpiling food, weapons and other resources in preparation for a cataclysmic event.
Meyer slowly morphed from prepper to leading the militant VOP. Known in antigovernment circles as “Screwy Louie,” Meyer is a conspiracy theorist and a self-proclaimed pastor/minister who manages a network of far-right extremists who intercept migrants and claim to be saving children from pedophiles on the Southern border. The group, established in Pima County, Arizona, was initially formed as a branch of the Walking for the Forgotten Ministry (WFTF Ministry). The WFTF Ministry is not actually a church; rather, it is the name given to a stunt Meyer concocted to walk around Pima County with an American flag to bring attention to the number of veterans who commit suicide after returning from war. Meyer has a track record of trying to sell his organization’s missions as being centered on veteran affairs, although Meyer himself isn’t a veteran.
Through the WFTF project, Meyer connected with veterans experiencing homelessness in Tucson, Arizona. The relationships Meyer built sparked an idea that resulted in him establishing encampments that were meant to serve as havens for homeless vets in Southern Arizona. Early on, Meyer claimed his camps were a safe place for people down on their luck, including undocumented immigrants. In recent years, this sentiment appears to have changed with the manifestation of the more militant Veterans on Patrol organization.
In a December 2015 online interview, Meyer recounted the creation of VOP in October of the same year. Meyer accused Indigenous kids of the Navajo Nation and Black kids of the Black Lives Matter movement of theft and gang activity, naming them as his justification for creating the more militant VOP to serve as a vigilante safety patrol for his camp sites.
Around that period, WFTF was managing at least three campsites. Two camps were in the Tucson area: Camp Bravo in Santa Rita and Camp Pulaski in Picture Rocks. The last, Alpha Camp, was in Phoenix. By 2017, all camps had been shut down due to security and sanitation concerns. Although the camps might have been a failure, they did allow Meyer to develop skills he would later use in his VOP efforts targeting migrants and humanitarian workers in the region. For starters, he admits the walkathons and camp sites, created to bring awareness to veteran suicides, allowed him to connect directly with homeless veterans who sometimes felt lost after returning from war.
In a 2017 interview with WHYY, an NPR and PBS affiliate, Meyer told the network that soldiers would sometimes come back without a sense of purpose and struggle to assimilate back into society. Although at the time Meyer had not yet formed the VOP, the facade of being a veteran-focused organization was being used to attract veterans, a practice that falls in line with other extremist organizations. Meyer’s VOP has never been a registered 501(c)(3) and has never offered veterans professional services of any kind.
These early years also gave Meyer a glimpse into the impact that bombastic allegations and carefully crafted messages could have on an organization reliant on donations. His narratives that VOP and WFTF were serving the community received an exuberant reception from many community leaders. The response brought attention, donated goods, and in some cases free services such as water and electricity for the WFTF campsites.
At VOP’s core are Meyer’s beliefs that government agencies are inadequate to carry out their duties as defined by Meyer, whether it be CBP processing migrants or the United States Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) providing services to homeless veterans. The WFTF initiative was born out of Meyer’s frustration with the VA and his belief that the agency was incapable of properly addressing the problem of homelessness among vets in Pima County. The core mission of WFTF eventually spurred the creation of VOP, the militant arm of WFTF that has argued CBP, CPS, the Biden administration and the county sheriff’s department are part of a criminal syndicate helping facilitate human trafficking.
The Birth of ‘Screwy Louie’
Meyer has a history of opposing government authority. In 2014, he reportedly traveled to Bunkerville, Nevada, to support the Cliven Bundy family in a standoff between antigovernment extremists and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). In 2016, Meyer once again made an appearance alongside members of the Bundy family when Cliven’s two sons, Ammon and Ryan Bundy, led a group of armed antigovernment militants into the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge opposing the government’s management of public lands. The refuge, located in Oregon, was occupied for 41 days and received a slew of national attention that attracted antigovernment extremists from around the country, including Meyer and his followers.
As the Phoenix New Times*reported in January 2016, Meyer’s arrival to Malheur was met with hostility from the pro-Bundy extremists. Accounts vary as to which faction among the antigovernment extremists initiated the violence, but a scuffle ensued between the Malheur camp of occupiers and Meyer’s Arizona group. Meyer told the *Phoenix New Times that his goal in traveling to Oregon was to remove Ryan Payne, a Bundyite, from the compound. Meyer claimed Payne was desperate to become a martyr. Additionally, Meyer made the journey north operating on the idea he would be rescuing women and children he believed were being held at the compound, a baseless allegation that was never corroborated by authorities.
Members of Payne’s camp accused Meyer of traveling to Oregon in search of fame. According to Bundyites, upon Meyer’s arrival to the occupation, two consecutive physical altercations broke out after Meyer became combative and antagonistic. Meyer’s reportedly combative behavior and unhinged rants, which included railing against other extremists in the antigovernment circle, caused VOP to be ostracized and earned Meyer the nickname “Screwy Louie.”
The Cemex Conspiracy
Having been shunned from the Malheur occupation, Meyer continued pursuing his obsession to identify and locate human trafficking networks. The 2018 “Operation Backyard Brawl” brought waves of support for Meyer after he duped local media into believing his group had uncovered the remnants of a “child sex camp” at a location belonging to Cemex, a Mexican cement company operating out of Arizona.
Articles began appearing detailing the allegations Meyer made that his group had discovered irrefutable evidence that a child sex camp had been operating in Tucson. To skeptics, the campsite resembled the remains of a homeless camp, but to Meyer every detail represented a twisted scene that confirmed his belief that children were being sexually abused and held against their will. Using Facebook, Meyer livestreamed what he called a prison cell that he speculated had been used to hold children, as well as what he referred to as a “rape tree,” which can only be described as a tree with makeshift straps on the branches. The small detail prompted Meyer to assert that the straps must have been used to bind children while they were being physically abused.
Meyer’s allegations garnered enough attention that Tucson police and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement responded by investigating the site. Both agencies found no evidence that could back up the sex-camp narrative. Adding to the hysteria, VOP members also claimed to have discovered the skeletal remains of a child, saying they had come across a child’s skull. That claim was also debunked, this time by the Pima County medical examiner, who concluded the remains belonged to an adult and had been discovered in a different area. As High Country Newsreported in 2018, Meyer’s fabrications spread like wildfire, leading his supporters to peddle misinformation, at one point even claiming they had also discovered additional skeletal remains, which were later confirmed to be animal remains.
On July 22, 2018, Meyer was arrested for trespassing when he tried to occupy the Cemex property, adhering to his narrative that children had been trafficked at that site. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence from experts debunking the outlandish narratives drawn up around the Cemex incident, to this day Meyer and the rest of VOP stand by the idea that they discovered the remains of a child sex ring in the Arizona desert.
On Telegram, Meyer has credited the Cemex incident as the “catalyst” for VOP’s shift in priorities, from “rescuing teenagers, homeless veterans, and drug addicts from the streets of Tucson to the child trafficking routes on the Arizona border.”
Meyer’s conspiracy theories have resulted in VOP using dehumanizing language when referring to migrants. On online spaces including Facebook and Telegram, such phrases as “shitbags,” “rapists,” “pedophiles,” “terrorists” and “thugs” are commonly used to describe people crossing the border. As VOP shifted its attention to identifying child trafficking routes, and by extension child traffickers, voiceless migrants became an easy target. By portraying all migrants as criminals, Meyer and VOP helped drive the nativist belief that an “invasion” is currently taking place at the Southern border.
Operation Water Bait
Unfazed by the facts surrounding the Cemex allegations, VOP continued operating in Pima County, conducting searches in the desert in hopes of uncovering human trafficking networks. The group slowly adopted QAnon conspiracy theories, and in online spaces they began tagging posts with hashtags such as #WWG1WGA, a message that translates to “Where we go one, we go all,” a unity slogan for QAnon followers. They also adopted beliefs that the “deep state” was secretly running human trafficking rings throughout the U.S., with the border serving as the entry point where children were being brought into the country by members of the Democratic Party and Hollywood elites. According to VOP, the purpose of this activity is to exploit women and children, harvest their organs and use them as sacrifices for satanic rituals.
Having been labeled a fringe conspiracy theorist even within the antigovernment movement, Meyer eventually found his new calling in 2020 when he launched a new venture titled #OperationStopitAll and #OperationWaterBait.
As VOP’s missions evolved, so did its narratives about the leaders orchestrating the supposed human trafficking rings. Operation Stop It All became its plan to start getting involved in border vigilante work to detain migrants. Operation Water Bait launched around the same period and had Meyer and his accomplice, Paul Flores, a UFO hunter and videographer for VOP, mischaracterize and harass faith-based humanitarian groups.
Hatewatch reported on VOP’s history of targeting and vandalizing water tanks belonging to the nonprofit Humane Borders. The organization manages a network of water stations in the Sonoran Desert that provide clean drinking water to stranded migrants. The initiative launched in 2000 and was still in effect in 2022, when migrant deaths hit record-high numbers, according to U.S. Border Patrol statistics.
Operation Water Bait consisted of Meyer and Flores setting up fake humanitarian water stations that resembled the stations managed by Humane Borders. The duo even copied the blue water flag and blue water barrels that have become synonymous with the Humane Borders name. The goal was for the two men to wait at the campsites and detain migrants who stopped for water, while simultaneously calling Border Patrol to pick up the detainees. Images shared on Telegram appear to show these detainments.
For years, Humane Borders has been on the receiving end of harassment campaigns by border vigilantes. A near-constant stream of vandalism-related acts has left its water tanks emptied out, shot and damaged. Meyer has been a perpetrator of this activity, uploading videos of himself emptying out water tanks and threatening humanitarian workers. On Telegram, he has threatened to dox humanitarian workers, and he has shared images of volunteers along with their license plates, accusing them of helping traffic drugs and children into the country.
Historically, Meyer and the rest of VOP have tried to circumvent criticism by arguing their organization is “press,” claiming they are a “ministry,” and more recently, rebranding as a “humanitarian organization.” Underneath the labels, it is clear the group is a vigilante organization. While group members have said they would “rarely” use force on migrants, they have been documented stopping, chasing and, at times, physically detaining migrants in online videos. The group has been allowed to operate freely in the face of officers with U.S Customs and Border Protection and the Pima County Sheriff’s Department.
The lack of oversight from both state and federal authorities has led VOP to launch additional operations that appear to violate the rights of migrants. Another VOP scheme has focused on the collection of cellphones and the analysis of personal content by Meyer and others on his team. Their goal is to identify traffickers, and in many cases, private contents from these cellphones are shared on Telegram, from phone contacts to personal images and videos. Meyer is convinced the digital lives of these migrants are proof of an international market for children and drugs in Arizona.
The ‘Border Coalition’
At the start of 2021, Meyer helped form what he called the “Border Coalition,” a network of three far-right organizations that came together to repel what they called the “invasion” of migrants passing through Pima County. This network of extremists was made up of Veterans on Patrol, AZ Desert Guardians, and the United People of America.
The group AZ Desert Guardians had historically engaged in missions to find child trafficking sites and had an on-and-off relationship with VOP. The United People of America (UPA) was a white nationalist group that attempted to recruit on the white nationalist site Stormfront. The group’s leader, Tyler Wentzel, has shared videos where he can be seen dropping antisemitic flyers around the Catalina Foothills community in Tucson. Wentzel and fellow UPA programmer Sean Gugerty have posted a steady stream of pro-Nazi propaganda online. The group claims to be looking out for the interests of citizens while simultaneously railing against Jewish people, immigrants and LGBTQ+ people. An online post from VOP echoes the same ideas: “Without any form of voting or consulting with the American people. The Jews have used their political puppets to alter the constitution and create new laws that allow mass-immigration, same-sex marriage, unregulated market, bribing of politicians, funding of Israel, and many more destructive policies.”
On Telegram, Meyer uploaded media with the help of his coalition, showing what appeared to be migrant apprehensions, pictures of ammunition, videos of shooting exercises and images of interactions with Border Patrol agents. In summer 2021, Hatewatch detailed at least one meeting between a CBP agent and Meyer at a border patrol checkpoint. In the video, Meyer can be seen engaging in friendly banter with the agent before handing over an SD card and parting ways. This interaction illustrates a common dynamic of the antigovernment movement. Its adherents will often claim to like and support law enforcement when officers or agencies work with them (or at least don’t get in their way). However, the minute law enforcement doesn’t do what an antigovernment group wants, it becomes an enemy. A striking example of this was on Jan. 6, when some rioters used the “Blue Lives Matter” flags they brought to the insurrection to assault Capitol Police officers.
The following month, the Southern Poverty Law Center sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security alerting it to the presence of Meyer’s coalition at the border.
By fall 2021, the makeup of the border coalition began to change. Both AZ Desert Guardians and UPA took a hiatus, but that didn’t stop VOP from working with other extremist organizations. This included at least one Proud Boy, the organization Women Fighting for America (WFFA), the online conspiracy group calling itself Dragon’s Den, Christopher Key aka “Vaccine Police,” and the Idaho antigovernment group the Panhandle Patriots Motorcycle Club. Several members from these extremist organizations were also found to have traveled to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, the day of the Capitol insurrection.
A common theme among border vigilantes is their belief in VOP’s message that they are carrying out God’s mission to rescue children from pedophiles. VOP members and volunteers peddle the notion that they do not have to adhere to federal or state laws while encouraging others online to do the same.
“We do not serve any government, nor recognize any perceived authority any government entities believe they have over our most high God, whom we serve. Not being subjected to the synagogue of Satan or its governments, we do not participate in selecting masters, serving in their wars, nor will we finance those who choose to serve in this Global One World Order. We serve The Most High God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Only his orders are acknowledged and obeyed,” read a statement released by the “ministry” and signed by Meyer in 2022. The conspiracies Meyer and VOP peddle are common falsehoods repeated in antigovernment circles.
At the start of 2022, Meyer and VOP began to aggressively push the idea that the group was a “humanitarian” organization and a “ministry,” co-opting rhetoric of legitimate faith-based humanitarian organizations. In 2023, multiple leaders of the group including Meyer listed themselves as pastors on the group’s social media.
Meyer runs from the law
In December 2021, Meyer faced vandalism charges stemming from 2019 when he destroyed water stations owned by Humane Borders. According to Tucson.com, Meyer was “convicted of four counts of criminal damage and one count of trespassing — all misdemeanors. When it came time for sentencing in January, he didn’t show up to court.”
Meyer quickly took to Telegram to update his followers, saying he would not turn himself in. One post read: “Ever heard of ‘where’s Waldo?’ Now it is ‘where’s Lewis Arthur.’ Get to border NOW and shut down these Pima County smuggling routes.” Not long after a warrant was issued for his arrest, Meyer announced he was going into hiding, choosing to run while leaving behind his operations to Shawna Martin, a VOP volunteer with ties to the extremist biker group Panhandle Patriots. Martin filmed herself in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, but it doesn’t appear that she went inside the Capitol.
Even though he removed himself from the day-to-day activities of VOP, Meyer continued to post on the group’s Telegram channel. As the rebranding of VOP continued into 2022, the group began taking on new campaigns, this time encouraging their followers to go after Child Protective Services (CPS). By February 2022, Meyer began inserting himself in the child custody case of Lee Jennings, a Seattle resident who was fighting to get custody of his son River Jennings. It’s unclear how the biological mother, Sarah Stanley, became acquainted with VOP, but after Jennings was granted increased visitation rights in late 2021, Stanley took the child and fled to Idaho.
Online, Meyer and VOP supporters began spreading disinformation about Jennings, peddling some of the same narratives they use to describe migrants. Uncorroborated allegations began circulating on Telegram accusing Jennings of being a “domestic violence perpetrator, con-artist and abuser.” In some instances, flyers were also being shared that targeted Jennings, his legal team and court officials, accusing them of being child traffickers, child predators and kidnappers.
Meyer’s and VOP’s attempts to get involved in the River Jennings case ended when the child was located in Alabama in April 2022. On Telegram, Meyer and Martin voiced their frustration with the government agencies that they accused of kidnapping River, and they continued to peddle the concept of instituting “safe houses” that VOP could use to hide children from pedophiles and government agencies.
Targeting children: Operation Heaven’s Snare
By March 2022, VOP was preoccupied with two main missions. The first was to continue intercepting migrants near the U.S. border while emphasizing the task of collecting the personal details of unaccompanied children. The second mission was to create a network of what Meyer calls “safe houses,” where he hopes to harbor children he thinks he is rescuing from CBP and CPS.
The first mission, which started in 2021, is dubbed Operation Heaven’s Snare. The goal of the group is to collect personal details of unaccompanied children, usually consisting of any details about their U.S.-based family or friends, with the intent to later track and follow the children. As Hatewatch has previously reported, in at least one instance, a group calling itself Dragon’s Den worked to track down and question the U.S. sponsor of a child who had previously been stopped by VOP.
Meyer and VOP are so committed to collecting the information of unaccompanied minors that they drafted a Spanish questionnaire to hand out to children. A copy of the questionnaire was shared online depicting a cheerful image of Dora the Explorer, a bilingual children’s cartoon character, asking for the child’s name, age and the name and phone number of their sponsor.
On several occasions, VOP members have shared images of migrant children filling out these forms or providing the details while being recorded. The content is used to create propaganda montages that are then used as recruitment videos online. It’s unclear how many unaccompanied children VOP has intercepted and deceived into handing over personal details.
In late March 2022, Melissa del Bosque of The Border Chronicle visited the VOP Sasabe camp. Del Bosque said she spent time with VOP’s Shawna Martin, who expressed her desire to save children from satanic child traffickers. Martin confirmed VOP members have engaged in the collection of the presumed phone numbers of U.S.-based sponsors from the unaccompanied minors. Martin also used the opportunity to reiterate fringe QAnon conspiracy theories, including the idea that child trafficking near the border could be traced back to the “deep state,” Democrats, Catholic Charities and “globalists.”
When Martin returned to Washington state in April 2022, she announced VOP volunteers “Jason,” “Rob” and “Adam” had picked up where VOP left off intercepting migrant children. The ringleader of this new group of border vigilantes appears to be Trump devotee and QAnon adherent Jason Frank. Frank, who was profiled by *The New York Times*, appears to have followed in the footsteps of VOP leadership, intercepting children under the guise of saving them from human traffickers.
A Cristian utopia
While Martin continued calling for volunteers to join VOP border operations in Arizona, Meyer took it upon himself to handle VOP’s second priority, dubbed Operation Promised Land. According to the VOP Telegram channel, Operation Promised Land is the “expansion of, and establishment of, off-grid properties where Christians and endangered children are provided sanctuary under the shadow of our almighty god.”
In April 2022, Meyer shared an open letter addressed to “the United States Federal Government, all State, Local, County Governments, all Agencies and Law Enforcement Entities, including courts and Federal Agencies and all political parties or participants,” announcing the creation of the “New American Movement.” The letter consolidated VOP’s beliefs into a plan that aimed to create a new nation separate from the United States and what the letter refers to as “the Synagogue of Satan’s Globalist Government.” The sentiment and language expressed in the announcement is in line with the antigovernment sovereign citizen ideology.
Details of how this new VOP movement would go about creating this new nation are limited, with the declaration stating only that private land throughout the U.S. and private property owners will form the basis for this new initiative. The letter goes on to claim this new nation will be shelter for children that are “extracted” by VOP. At the bottom of the proclamation, the statement reads, “Signed, We the People Liberated by God and walking now from the Devil.”
Operation Pegasus Down
In October 2023, VOP became preoccupied with chemtrails and blaming the U.S. Air Force for their presence. Meyer recruited volunteers, some of whom were from the homeless community in and around Yuba County, California, where he was living, and he eventually established a “Command Center.” He crafted Operation Pegasus Down under the VOP mantle as “a mission to eliminate the stratosphere of aerosol injections” and target the entities he considered responsible. Members of the operation were “occupying the community surrounding Beale Air Force Base,” according to a VOP livestream. Meyer later shared with the base that he would be “sticking around for 3 months, setting up a Media booth, collecting intelligence, searching for Chemtrail Pilots, and providing Bibles to those coming on and off Base.”
VOP activities included standing on the Highway 70 bridge with signs which read, “Reward for: Chemtrail Pilots,” and “Wanted Alive: Chemtrail Pilots”; holding a “chemtrail pilot checkpoint” at a Yuba County intersection; recruiting volunteers; and sending communiques to the Air Force.
Meyer posted the following to social media in early November 2023: “I gave my word that if the Sheriffs and Local PD targeted those fighting for blue skies that I would launch Operations against them.” By the middle of the month, Meyer shared the following message: “I explained clearly to everyone I will go as far as necessary for our children’s sake.”
In January 2024, VOP planned to expand its operations to McChord Air Force Base in Washington. The group called it the second round of its efforts against “the psychotic and genocidal US Military Industrial Complex.” The group would add Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona to their list later in the week.
However, Meyer remained focused on Beale AFB, which was closest to his residence. In late November 2023, he filmed a video wearing black “war paint.” He said he was pointing his camera and tripod, which he modified and called his “assault camera,” at drivers on the highway until the California Highway Patrol forced him to stop.
On Dec. 1, 2023, Meyer was detained and held at a local health facility for mental evaluation and then transferred to the country jail to await a hearing on his activities. Meyer’s case was dismissed, and he was freed from custody.
What’s Next
Veterans on Patrol has adopted several far-right extremist ideologies since its founding in 2015, and it continued to peddle conspiracy theories in its search for child trafficking networks in 2024.
The organization has also been attempting to expand its base of operations. This includes Meyer temporarily relocating to Northern California in 2023 and a new chapter forming in Washington state in January 2024.
VOP initially sought to build its base of operations in the small town of Washtucna, Washington. The group was met with local opposition after it announced at a Washtucna City Council meeting that it planned to build a “beautiful compound” there for its work. Eventually, the owner of the property VOP was considering rescinded the offer. Sheriff Dale Wagner wrote on a local Washtucna Facebook page, “The landowner has expressed their sincere apology for any inconvience [sic] or disrutuption [sic] caused.”
Shortly after leaving Washtucna, VOP and Meyer announced their arrival in Spokane in mid-March 2024, stating, “Child SAR Operations in and around Spokane, Washington, launch this week.” Shortly after arriving, Meyer claimed to have set up a coalition to assist his anti-trafficking operations, allegedly including members of the Proud Boys, One Percenters, and Three Percenters. Actions included passing out flyers about VOP’s operations and patrolling suspected high-trafficking areas of Spokane. From March to August 2024, Meyer claimed the city council and a municipal judge were complicit in human trafficking operations, in addition to Meyer staking out the residence of a private citizen. By mid-August, VOP and Meyer had left Washington. Meyer headed east.
In October 2024, VOP was one of multiple militias touting their efforts mobilizing around Hurricane Helene. While they emphasized providing aid to victims, they actually spent most of the time spreading conspiracies that helped create a hostile environment for federal agencies. Meyer showed up in Rutherford County, North Carolina, with no supplies, but he made big promises of having a God-given plan to help the area bounce back over the next three years. He set up a place where people could donate goods and supplies in a parking lot. However, VOP and Meyer also came with antigovernment conspiracy theories.
On social media, VOP claimed, “Hurricane Helene was an act of war perpetuated by the United States Military” and said it was a “land grab” responsible for “murdering hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans.” The militia claimed it had come to replace the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which it claimed was “pulling a dirty trick on good people,” and protecting community members from the federal government. The conspiracies and misinformation spewed by VOP and others got in the way of federal relief workers, causing new security practices that slowed relief to be implemented. Locals finally got wise to the game VOP and Meyer were playing and successfully encouraged them to leave town.
VOP has also been successful at rebranding itself from an organization that was once centered on providing services to veterans experiencing homelessness to a QAnon-esque, Christian nationalist group of vigilantes detaining migrant children and harassing government agencies and individuals who, based on conspiracy theories, they consider perpetrators. The group, which shares some cult-like characteristics, operates on the notion that satanic forces have taken over the government and form online and real-world campaigns against anyone who speaks out against their activities.
---
[### Veterans on Patrol
Southern Poverty Law Center
https://www.splcenter.org › resources › extremist-files](https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/veterans-patrol/)
Veterans on Patrol (VOP) is an antigovernment militia located in Pima County, Arizona. The founder, Michael “Lewis Arthur” Meyer, is a Christian nationalist.
[### Veterans on Patrol
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Veterans_on_Patrol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veterans_on_Patrol)
Veterans on Patrol (VOP) is a far-right extremist anti-government militia founded by Michael "Lewis Arthur" Meyer in 2015. The group primarily spreads ...
[### Veterans on Patrol takes credit for Oklahoma weather radar ...
The Arizona Republic
https://www.azcentral.com › local › arizona › 2025/07/11](https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2025/07/11/veterans-on-patrol-oklahoma-weather-radar-vandalism/84540995007/)
3 days ago — Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, who leads the anti-government group Veterans On Patrol, believes the military and media use radar to control the ...
Missing: CHRISTIAN | Show results with: CHRISTIAN
[### A group that calls itself an anti-government militia told ...
Facebook · KWTV - NEWS 9
20+ reactions · 4 days ago](https://www.facebook.com/NEWS9/videos/a-group-that-calls-itself-an-anti-government-militia-told-news-9-its-absolutely-/1409550813624265/)
The warning comes just days after a vandal knocked out News 9's live radar. Hear directly from the group's founder and why David Payne says the ...
Missing: CHRISTIAN | Show results with: CHRISTIAN
[### Minister Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer shares why he's ...
YouTube · East Idaho News
4.8K+ views · 3 years ago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1J-EWtVpes)
EastIdahoNews Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer is the man behind Walking for the Forgotten Ministry and Veterans on Patrol based in Tuscon, ...
[### Far-right militia targets US military over baseless hurricane ...
The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com › us-news › nov › far-rig...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/19/far-right-militia-targets-military-weather-manipulation)
Nov 19, 2024 — Veterans on Patrol believes government caused Helene with weather manipulation tech, Telegram chats reveal.
[### 'Anti-government militia' says it's targeting Oklahoma ...
News 9
https://www.news9.com › story ›](https://www.news9.com/story/686de418f023bda6c04ff4e5/-anti-government-militia-says-it-s-targeting-oklahoma-weather-radars)
4 days ago — An “anti-government militia” called 'Veterans on Patrol' told News 9 on Tuesday that it is “targeting” Oklahoma weather radars, ...
Missing: CHRISTIAN | Show results with: CHRISTIAN
[### Far-right extremist group threatens to take weather radars ...
KFOR
https://kfor.com › news › local › far-right-extremist-gro...](https://kfor.com/news/local/far-right-extremist-group-threatens-to-take-weather-radars-offline/)
5 days ago — An Oklahoma City news station's weather radar was attacked not long after a far-right extremist group threatened to take "as many NexRads ...
Missing: CHRISTIAN | Show results with: CHRISTIAN
[### Conspiracy Theories About the Texas Floods Lead to ...
WIRED
https://www.wired.com › Politics › weather](https://www.wired.com/story/texas-floods-conspiracy-theories-geoengineering-weather-weapon/)
6 days ago — Disinformation around a “weather weapon” and cloud seeding is being widely promoted by everyone from anti-government extremists to GOP ...
[### Anti-government militia group claims responsibility for ...
News 9
https://www.news9.com › story › anti-government-miltia...](https://www.news9.com/story/686f05493c7e238539083cd0/anti-government-miltia-group-claims-responsibility-for-vandalism-to-news-9-radar)
20 hours ago — Anti-government group Veterans On Patrol claims responsibility for vandalizing News 9's NextGen Live radar in Oklahoma City.
Missing: CHRISTIAN | Show results with: CHRISTIAN
===
// hurric BS?
alternet-
Extremists posing as aid workers urge NC locals to tear down cell towers and hit military
Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer booking photo from 2018
Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer booking photo from 2018 (Courtesy Tucson Police Department)
Jordan Green November 02, 2024
A group of anti-government extremists who showed up in western North Carolina promising to provide disaster relief after Hurricane Helene is now threatening to destroy cell-phone towers and sabotage military vehicles.
The group, Veterans on Patrol, attracted attention by setting up a disaster relief staging area in the parking lot of the Ingles grocery store in Lake Lure, about 50 miles from Asheville.
But locals, including some who initially cooperated with the group, began to complain about threats and harassment.
Over the past three weeks, members of the group, which falsely claims that Helene was caused by a “weather weapon,” have been making conspiracy-driven claims that the U.S. military is attempting to kill U.S. citizens with “directed energy weapons.”
ALSO READ: Inside the grift that could cost Donald Trump the election
Veterans on Patrol’s channel on the encrypted social-media platform Telegram posted a message on Thursday displaying photos of what appears to be a cell tower on a mountaintop. The message asserted that locals “are in Live Exercises where the United States Military is permitted to destroy your homes, bodies and minds,” while suggesting that equipment on the tower “is solely for providing the U.S. military the means to murder Americans.”
“Focus on tearing down their weapons,” the message reads. It continues, “All it takes is one weapon tower being toppled with the stated reason spoken boldly.”
Another message posted in the group’s Telegram channel appears to advocate for sabotaging military vehicles and assets.
“Simple acts of pouring sugar into fuel tanks of military equipment, backup power systems, and personal vehicles of military personnel can wreak havoc on those who murdered all these people out here,” reads the message, which was posted on Wednesday.
Soldiers from Fort Liberty and Fort Campbell have deployed to western North Carolina to assist in the disaster response, along with National Guard members from nine states.
Veterans on Patrol is led by Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, who has a long history of anti-government extremism, dating back at least 10 years. Meyer, according to the extremism watchdog group Southern Poverty Law Center, is not a veteran.
Reached by phone on Friday, Meyer doubled down on the threats.
“Jesus used bullwhips and flipped tables,” he told Raw Story. “We’re going to use our bullwhips and topple towers.”
At first during the interview, Meyer argued that the Telegram messages weren’t advocating for targeting cell towers, saying instead that the group would “surgically” remove the supposed “directed energy weapons." He went on to say that they would provide Appalachian residents with generators and Starlink boxes so they could maintain power and communication links.
Asked about the message referencing “pouring sugar into fuel tanks,” Meyer told Raw Story: “We’re going to destroy your tanks…. You want to get dirty? That’s what we should be doing.”
Veterans on Patrol has promoted multiple conspiracy theories based on false claims since arriving in western North Carolina.
One message posted on Telegram on Oct. 22 claimed that “Helene was a Weather Weapon steered to destroy the area, while also claiming that the investment fund BlackRock is attempting a “land grab” and describing the storm and its aftermath as “an act of war perpetrated against the People.”
As the final day of voting in the presidential election approaches, posts on the group’s Telegram channel have taken on an increasingly urgent tone.
The Oct. 22 post claimed that “stolen elections” are a real phenomenon, along with “weather weapons,” “Satanic pedophiles” and “adrenochrome," which refers to a QAnon conspiracy theory that a cabal of elites tortures children to extract a chemical from their bodies which is then used as a recreational drug.
In another post last week, a Veterans on Patrol member nicknamed “Shepherd” claimed that the U.S. Air Force command is instructing pilots “to deploy additional weather weapons.” The post goes on to say, “These people don’t have 2 weeks to wait for vote and 3 months to hopefully wait for a Regime change.”
Another message on the group channel that was published on Wednesday suggests without basis that Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff is the beneficiary of BlackRock’s supposed landgrab.
Speaking to Raw Story, Meyer seemed to all but dare law enforcement to intervene.
“For people to go and do something to prevent weapons from being deployed — that’s not a crime,” he said. “If they want to bring this to court and charge us with conspiracy, then let’s go.”
The FBI did not respond to an inquiry about Veterans on Patrol's activities, but Meyer told Raw Story in an email that he "would imagine the FBI knows full well what we are attempting through Operation Leaning Tower."
Meyer told Raw Story that he notified the office of Gov. Roy Cooper about his "operation." Cooper's office did not immediately respond to a voicemail message from Raw Story.
Phone calls from Raw Story for this story to officials in Lake Lure and Rutherford County, which surrounds the town, went unreturned.
Meyer’s history of extremism dates back to the Bundy Ranch standoff, when armed militants faced down the FBI and other federal agencies in 2014 during a dispute over rancher Cliven Bundy’s refusal to pay grazing fees. Meyer’s involvement in the Bundy Ranch standoff came to light later, when the Oregonian reported that he and a group of friends got into a brawl with other anti-government extremists during the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which Bundy and a group of armed supporters had occupied.
Meyer founded Veterans on Patrol in Arizona in 2015, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Prior to presenting itself as a disaster response group in the aftermath of Helene, Veterans on Patrol has claimed its efforts were directed towards rescuing children from sex trafficking, addressing veteran suicide and dubious claims that the military is maliciously harming civilians. Meyer’s activities have frequently landed him in trouble with law enforcement.
Meyer was arrested twice in 2015 after emergency responders talked him down from a light pole in Surprise, Ariz. in 2015.
In 2018, was arrested by the police in Tucson, Ariz. for trespassing and an outstanding warrant for an assault charge, after occupying a tower on an industrial property. A press release from the Tucson Police Department claimed that Meyer “found an abandoned homeless encampment” on the property, “and fictitiously declared, without evidence or corroboration, that the area was the site of a sex-trafficking ring.”
The Tucson police said they received complaints from Tucson residents that Meyer and his followers had threatened and intimidated them, and Meyer made “multiple threatening and hostile remarks directed towards various elected and appointed officials” through social media.
In the summer of 2024, before Hurricane Helene, Veterans on Patrol was active in Spokane, Wash. In Telegram message from July 2, 2024, Veterans on Patrol announced to the police that it “would no longer be safe” for one of its officers “to work his beat.” The channel also posted the home addresses of city council members.
NOW READ: Fox News is the reason the race is close
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BELOW IS ACCID BAK OKLA
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AN 6 25
Donald Trump’s second term is shaping up to be just as much about the past as the future. Not the past as it unfolded, but the version of events as he wants them remembered.
*This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.
There are a few troubling examples of how the president and his allies are actively attempting to reshape public views of the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection — and how these efforts are starting to affect real people and real institutions.
Take Oklahoma. Teachers there are now facing updated social studies standards that instruct students to “identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results” — not to examine election systems or to discuss voter confidence, but to presume that the election was flawed.This language is a quiet but profound distortion: It accepts Trump’s false narrative of fraud and requires educators to teach that falsehood as fact.
This illustrates the insidious consequences of partisan narratives hardening into policy. Oklahoma’s education chief, Ryan Walters, has aligned himself with efforts to eliminate so-called left-wing indoctrination in schools. But he’s supporting these new standards, which contradict the facts made plain in every credible post-election review, from Trump’s own first-term Department of Justice to GOP-led audits. Courts, including those with Trump-nominated judges, rejected dozens of spurious legal challenges, and officials in every state certified the results.
These facts have been sidelined in shaping what schoolchildren learn, which has long-term implications for public trust in elections.
Or consider the protests against aggressive immigration raids in Los Angeles. Trump has called the demonstrators there “insurrectionists” and is moving military forces into the city.
And what about the convicted insurrectionists who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol? Trump issued them pardons and commutations as one of the first acts of his second term, erasing the crimes and violence of that day — including threats to execute his vice president — from the historical record. (A plaque honoring law enforcement officials who defended the Capitol that day still hasn’t been installed, despite pleas to House Speaker Mike Johnson.)
Trump’s administration is also reportedly developing a plan to pardon the “fake electors” and other Trump allies charged or convicted in connection with attempts to overturn the election, as well as the plot to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor, as part of a broader effort to shield MAGA supporters from legal consequences, and perhaps convey the sense that these events never happened.
That is, the president is using both his immense influence and his constitutional authority to bend justice, public education, and public memory toward a false understanding of the past. And his allies are bending to his will.
What does this tell us about Trump’s capacity to reshape perceptions in the face of actual facts? And can anything stand in his way?
Some answers may come from a federal courtroom in Denver, where one of the more surreal chapters of the 2020 fallout is still playing out. That’s where the defamation trial against Trump ally and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell — brought by former Dominion Voting Systems executive Eric Coomer — is underway.
Lindell, who has claimed that Dominion and Coomer were part of a scheme to steal the election from Trump, once promised that this trial would prove him right. But his lawyers seem to be arguing now that he’s so erratic, so impulsive, that nothing he says could be taken seriously enough to count as defamation.
“It’s just words,” said Lindell’s attorney, according to a Denver reporter covering the trial. “All Mike Lindell did was talk.”
That’s a hell of a defense, and itself a rewriting of history. The problem with it is that millions of people did believe Lindell, and still do.
Coomer may get to clear his name in the case against Lindell, but the broader effort to rewrite the past is gaining ground where it matters most: in classrooms, in Congress, and in the minds of voters. Juries and the judiciary can punish lies, but they can’t reach every classroom or undo every pardon.
With so many institutional guardrails already buckling under pressure, the remaining checks are public memory, a free press, and a willingness — from enough of us — to keep insisting on saying what actually happened.
Jessica Huseman is Votebeat’s editorial director and is based in Dallas. Contact Jessica atjhuseman@votebeat.org.}:
Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization covering local election integrity and voting access. Sign up for their newsletters here.
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AN 6 25
OKLAHOMA CITY – The Oklahoma National Guard is not planning on participating in the nation’s largest military parade.
The June 14 parade will feature tanks rolling through the U.S. capital’s streets, thousands of soldiers marching and military fly overs to celebrate the Army’s 250th birthday. Additionally, it will also be President Donald Trump’s 79th birthday.
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RWW 05/19/2025
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- Andrew Prokop @ Vox: The ugly truth about Trump’s big, beautiful bill
Trump is promising tax cuts and a new golden age. Here’s what’s really inside it.
- Sean Murphy @ The Associated Press: New standards for Oklahoma high school students promote misinformation about the 2020 election
Oklahoma high school students studying U.S. history learn about the Industrial Revolution, women’s suffrage and America’s expanding role in international affairs. Beginning next school year, they will add conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election.
- Teddy Wilson @ Radical Reports: Pardon Tracker: Pardoned Capitol Rioters Profiting From January 6th
Pardoned Capitol Rioters have 'worked to profit from their connection to the day’s chaos, recording podcasts, announcing runs for public office and advertising merchandise lines.'
- Kipp Jones @ Mediaite: Trump Administration Agrees to Pay $5 Million to Family of Slain Jan. 6 Rioter Ashli Babbit
The Trump administration has agreed to pay millions to settle a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of Ashli Babbitt.
- Jessica Piper and Holly Otterbein @ Politico: Why has Elon Musk disappeared from the spotlight?
The tech CEO isn’t exactly gone yet, but Republicans have stopped bringing him up.
- Hemant Mehta @ Friendly Atheist: Trump admin drops $37.7M fine against Christian school that lied about tuition
Grand Canyon University misled students about the costs of its doctoral programs. Now it's off the hook.
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05/05/2025 rww
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- Peter Wade @ Rolling Stone: Trump Says ‘I Don’t Know’ When Asked if He Has to ‘Uphold the Constitution’
The president complained that due process rights are interfering with his mass deportations.
- Joe DePaolo @ Mediaite: Trump Tries to Have it Both Ways on Economy: The ‘Good Parts’ are Mine, The ‘Bad Parts’ are Biden’s
President Donald Trump attempted to take credit for parts of the economy which he considers “good,” while blaming former President Joe Biden for other parts he considers “bad.”
- Travis Gettys @ Raw Story: 'I love you guys': Trump greets convicted Proud Boys militant at Mar-a-Lago
President Donald Trump offered a message of support to the Jan. 6 insurrectionists when he met with a former Proud Boys militant in Mar-a-Lago over the weekend.
- Hemant Mehta @ Friendly Atheist: A curriculum coup: Oklahoma Republicans allow right-wing rewrite of history
State Superintendent Ryan Walters bypassed oversight to push Christian Nationalism and right-wing conspiracies into public classrooms.
- The Throckmorton Initiative: Charlie Kirk's Christian America, Part Two
In this segment, I examine the notion that there was something exceptionally Christian about America's founding era. Last week, I fact-checked Charlie Kirk's viral video defense of the belief that America was founded as a Christian nation in the legal sense. Most of what Kirk had to say was irrelevant or incorrect.
- Janna Brancolini @ The Daily Beast: Laura Loomer Sets to Work on New MAGA Civil War Over Trump Pick
The 9/11 truther denounced Trump’s nominee for U.S. surgeon general and claimed the COVID-19 vaccine is “killing millions of people.”
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an 5 25
an 4 25
GOPers mull bill to reject OK academic standards that include 2020 election 'discrepancies'
Nuria Martinez-Keel, Oklahoma Voice
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an 3 25
Oklahoma subcommittee rejects MAGA Republican’s $3 million request for Bibles in classrooms
AN 2 25
Irate parents taught an Oklahoma lawmaker a life lesson I bet he’ll never forget: Do not mess with the education of public school children who have been diagnosed with a disability.
Republican Dusty Deevers emerged last week from the dustup with parents, educators and therapists with a metaphorical black eye, reminding him that Oklahomans don’t like schoolyard bullies.
In case you missed all the hubbub, somehow Deevers got the idiotic idea that too many Oklahoma children are receiving special education services through the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA. That’s the federal law that protects children’s right to a “free appropriate public education” and guarantees that they have access to special education and early intervention services.
He pointed to estimates indicating that as many as 1 in 6 Oklahoma school children are currently on Individualized Education Programs, better known as an IEP, which provides them access to services such as speech, language, physical, occupational and behavioral therapies to help them succeed in school.
Generally, legislators have tacitly acknowledged that these programs help students succeed academically even though state and federal leaders have long provided only a fraction of the funding necessary to operate them at their maximum potential.
But rather than urging his colleagues to ramp up funding and bolster support for those children, the lawmaker from Elgin hatched a harebrained plan to reduce participation numbers by removing eligibility for in-school services. The proposed law would have required parents to seek services on their own dime after school hours. If parents couldn’t afford it or find qualified therapists, too bad, so sad.
The plan also would have prohibited Medicaid from helping to pay for those in-school services as well as covering the costs of sight screenings.
At first the proposal flew under the radar, obscured among nearly 3,100 bills filed for consideration for the 2025 legislative session, but then the ramifications of Deevers’ plan began to dawn on folks and outrage exploded on social media.
Deevers swiftly discovered that there might be one thing almost as scary as incurring the wrath of God — Oklahomans furious that legislators are impeding on their “parental rights.” (You know, that popular buzzword that Republicans like to bandy about.)
Deevers tried to clean up the mess by promising to amend the bill because he said it wasn’t doing what he intended. However, he dumped gasoline on the raging Dumpster fire thanks to a lengthy post on X that revealed that he believes we might have “far over-diagnosed students;” that he wants to audit IEP spending; protect “parental rights;” force schools to stop providing students on IEPs “hormonal birth control;” and exclude “non-educationally necessary services.”
That unleashed a second torrent of anger because any parent who has a child on an IEP knows that schools are not willy-nilly thinking up ways to place children into services they don’t need. And that anybody who has set foot in a school knows how rare it is to hear parents complain that a school is doing too much and overperforming.
It’s much more common to hear they’re not doing enough.
They know that to get a child evaluated for a disability takes a considerable amount of advocacy work from adults in a child’s life, numerous meetings with the school, months of evaluations and tons of paperwork.
Based on the complexities of even qualifying for an IEP, I’d say probably more students need specialized services than are receiving them. Our numbers should probably be much higher.
They also know that parents have an enormous amount of rights when it comes to how children with disabilities are educated. Schools don’t randomly place children on IEPs without parental involvement. Parents have to agree to the placement and can also choose to end those services at any time. Parents get to set the parameters of how often they meet with school leaders and determine how often their child receives services. They can demand a meeting at any time to discuss perceived problems.
And anybody with an iota of sense knows that IEPs are not prescription pads that allow educators to dole out medication or birth control. Medical doctors prescribe that, not speech therapists. In fact, it’s such a farfetched idea, I’ve never heard of that being a concern in Oklahoma. Schools are required to operate within the confines of the IEPs, which parents must sign off on.
But who are we to allow facts to stop some good old fashioned fear mongering?
To Deevers’ credit, he appears to have taken parental feedback seriously. Last week, he announced plans to withdraw the bill and vowed that it wouldn’t be considered in the Legislature.
I hope that more lawmakers will take note, because we often see an unwillingness to take public feedback seriously and plenty of excuses why it should be ignored. A common excuse is they’re only interested in feedback from their constituents.
It’s time for that foolhardy mindset to stop, and the voices of Oklahomans to be taken seriously. People affected by legislation don’t necessarily live within a specific lawmaker’s legislative boundaries, but their tax dollars are keeping the lights on in every office.
I’m glad their message came through loud and clear: Picking on 116,000 children that have diagnosed disabilities is just wrong. And their Legislature shouldn’t be weaponized against them.
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE. SUPPORT
Oklahoma Voice is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.
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an 1 25
Lawmakers challenge OK superintendent's Bible initiatives after test scores tank
rww
01/29/2025
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Right-wing pastorJesse Leon Rodgers is the founder and chairman of the Christian nationalist organization City Elders, which seeks to "establish divine order in spiritual and civil governance" by bringing local pastors together with elected officials and religious-right activists. Rodgers himself is a hardcore theonomist who believes that far-right Christians such as himself are to be responsible for "installing people in civil government."
During a recent City Elders event, Rogers bragged that while his organization already has significant influence over determining who runs for office in his home state of Oklahoma, as it expands its efforts, it will be able to "determine who gets in public office."
"Increase, multiply, subdue; that's the divine pattern," Rogers said. "Increase has to do with expanded spheres of influence and control. I use that word editorially, I use it intentionally, but control is not in the sense of you have to dominate people; we have to dominate the devil. We have to control and be in control of the powers of Hell and darkness. That's the reason for expanded spheres of influence."
"We have a far greater sphere of influence than our numbers presently are in Oklahoma," Rogers bragged, saying that those considering running for governor "regularly call" and ask him if they should run for office.
"As a matter of fact, we had one this past week that's in a very significant office and called and said, 'I just want to get feedback from City Elders whether you guys think I should run for this office,'" Rogers said. "This past week, I had three different ones running for office contact me."
Rogers said his organization is working toward establishing "spheres of influence in every county" in Oklahoma and once that is accomplished, "it won't just be people running for lieutenant governor or for Senate or House, there will be people running for offices across the state of Oklahoma that will go to that local City Elders council and say, 'I want you to pray for me because I'm running for office.'"
"At some point," Rogers declared, "we will determine who gets in public office."
"That's God's design," Rogers added. "That's God's intent. Not that the church be some little group on the other side of the tracks scratching out a little bit of influence. God gave the keys of the kingdom to the ekklesia. It should be godly men and women who determine who gets in public office."
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AN 1 25
In his frenetic first week back at the White House, President Donald Trump allowed immigration raids at schools, sidelined federal employees focused on diversity and ended civil rights investigations into book bans.
*This story first appeared at The 74, a nonprofit news site covering education. Sign up for free newsletters from The 74 to get more like this in your inbox.
But the biggest education story of the week — one that could change public schools forever — broke late Friday afternoon at a building two miles away.
The U.S. Supreme Court, backed by the conservative supermajority Trump secured in his first term, agreed to hear an Oklahoma case over whether the law permits public dollars to flow to an explicitly religious charter school. A decision in favor of the first-of-its kind Catholic school could further entangle the government and religion, dramatically altering the historic balance between church and state.
“The stakes really couldn’t be higher,” said Derek Black, a law professor at the University of South Carolina. While there are Catholic schools that have converted into secular charters, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School’s “ultimate goal,” according to its website, is “eternal salvation.”
“The issue,” Black said, “is whether a religious entity can operate a charter school that teaches religion as truth.”
Related #### Oklahoma Supreme Court Knocks Down Bid for Virtual Catholic Charter School
Trump supports Christianity in the classroom and has vowed to bring prayer back to public schools. But he’s just the most recognizable face of a larger movement that has been building toward this moment — one that includes governors and state lawmakers, right-leaning think tanks and wealthy donors. Those donors have not only financed campaigns to seat conservative justices, but also helped fund the years of legal work that ultimately landed the school’s application before the high court.
Some evangelicals believe the courts have long misapplied Thomas Jefferson’s famous words about “a wall of separation between church and state.” Dismissed by most constitutional experts, this view holds that Jefferson’s aim was to keep the federal government from interfering with religious freedom — not to protect the government from the church.
The debate over the school will culminate in oral arguments before the Supreme Court in late April.
Governors in Texas, Oklahoma and Louisiana, who advocate for weaving the Bible into classroom instruction, have long awaited such a case. “Denying St. Isidore a charter solely because they’re religious is flat-out unconstitutional,” Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt posted on X. “This will be one of the most significant decisions of our lifetime.”
But his state’s GOP attorney general disagrees. Gentner Drummond’s office will argue that both state and federal laws clearly require charter schools to be non-sectarian. That view was summed up by American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, who said reversing the Oklahoma court’s decision “would drive a dagger into the very idea of public education and strike at the heart of our nation’s democratic foundations.”
One justice who won’t be involved in the decision is Trump’s most recent Supreme Court appointee. Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from deliberating over whether to hear the case. While the court offered no explanation, Barrett is a longtime friend of Nicole Garnett, the Notre Dame University law professor who advised the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa on the charter application. Garnett, who had no comment on Barrett’s recusal, also sits on the board of the Federalist Society, a conservative and libertarian legal organization that has influenced Trump and previous Republican presidents on judicial appointments.
Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself from deciding whether to hear the case. She is a longtime friend of a Notre Dame law professor who advised the Catholic church on the charter application. (Sarah Silbiger-Pool/Getty Images)
But attorneys for the school may not need Barrett’s vote. Four of the other conservative justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch — have all voiced support for greater religious freedom. Over a decade ago, Thomas wrote an opinion suggesting states could establish their own Christian denominations. More recently, in 2022, Gorsuch referred to the “so-called” separation of church and state in a case over whether Boston should fly a Christian flag outside City Hall.
While Chief Justice John Roberts takes a more cautious approach to court precedents, he has sided with the conservative majority in all of its most recent church-state cases. Two of them, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue and Carson v. Makin, focused on choice programs at religious schools.
Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents the state’s charter school board, draws on those cases to conclude that charter schools are inherently private organizations — not “state actors.” By keeping St. Isadore closed, the Alliance argues, Oklahoma is discriminating against religion and denying families more options.
“Oklahoma parents and children are better off with more educational choices, not fewer,” Jim Campbell, the Alliance’s chief legal counsel, said in a statement.
Related #### Choice Supporters to Catholic Charter School Backers: ‘Proceed with Caution’
In a brief in support of the charter school, eight GOP-led states said that prohibiting the funding of religious charter schools would compromise their ability to award grants or contracts to other sectarian organizations, like orphanages and groups providing scholarships.
The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools dismissed that fear and said a charter is not “merely a grant program.”
“The charter school is a state-created public school under Oklahoma law, and its actions are state actions,” the organization wrote in its brief.
Black agreed, saying that the school’s argument “has no grounding in facts or law.”
The court’s decision to take the case left the law professor with an “enormous pit” in his stomach. Black worries the justices don’t fully understand the complexities of public education funding, particularly the differences between charters, vouchers and education savings accounts.
“That leads to either honest errors, misunderstandings or the ability of other people to lead you astray,” he said.
Experts say it’s hard to ignore the strides evangelical Republicans have made at elevating the importance of Christianity in the classroom.
Red states aren’t just passing voucher programs that allow parents to pay tuition at faith-based schools; they’re also incorporating Bible lessons into the curriculum. If the court rules in favor of the school, Preston Green, a University of Connecticut education and law professor, predicts religious organizations would suddenly “clamour” to open faith-based charters.
Related #### In Close Vote, Texas Approves Reading Program Laden With Bible Lessons
“We’re on the verge of a new system where religious organizations are going to be among the players” running schools, he said. “How do states deal with that reality?”
In addition to allowing public education funds to support a specific faith, a decision in favor of religious charters could also have a devastating financial impact on traditional districts fighting to prevent enrollment loss, Black said. Oklahoma already offers a tax credit scholarship program for school choice, but it doesn’t always cover the full tuition at a private school. Families who want their child to have a Christian education might be more likely to flock to a religious charter school where the cost is fully covered, he explained.
Robert Franklin, a former member of the state’s charter board, is already thinking about those ramifications. Like public school advocates in other red states, he’s concerned that expanding private school choice will hit rural schools the
“Oklahoma is a deeply red state,” he said. “I don’t think we have an appetite for raising taxes around here to support schools.”
Franklin has a unique vantage point on the constitutional dispute that began overtwo years ago. He voted against St. Isidore’s contract in 2023 and says he felt “vindicated” last year when the state’s high court struck it down. But he’s less confident the U.S. Supreme Court will rule the same way.
“It’s a tumultuous moment,” he said. “There are a lot of forces pulling the other direction.”
an 1 25
'Reject this rule': OK schools want to make parents report citizenship status to enroll kidshardest and leave less funding for traditional schools.
an 12 24
Even 'devout Christians' are appalled as OK mulls $3.3 million bid on 'Trump Bibles' for schools
an 12 24
Oklahoma State Schools Superintendent Ryan Walters, a far-right Christian nationalist and MAGA Republican, has drawn scathing criticism from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Americans United for separation of Church and State, and others for trying to impose Christian fundamentalism on students in public schools. And Walters has been clashing with journalists as well, including reporters for KFOR-TV in Oklahoma City.
Walters excluded KFOR reporters from press conferences, and the station responded with a lawsuit.
But on Wednesday, December 11, KFOR reported that it had "won a legal battle" against Walters and his allies.
READ MORE:'The next recession starts here': Trump team weighs abolishing bank regulators
According to KOSU-FM (a National Public Radio-associated station in Oklahoma), "State Superintendent Ryan Walters and his press secretary Dan Isett have agreed to allow KFOR journalists into all of the Education Department's news conferences and meetings. The leaders have also agreed to pay attorney fees and damages of $17.91 — a symbolic amount, as 1791 was the year the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified."
According to KFOR, Walters and Isett agreed to "add KFOR to" their "e-mail list for press releases."
KFOR noted, "Attorney fees have yet to be determined, but Ryan Walters and his attorneys did agree to pay them."
Charles Miller of the Institute for Free Speech said of the ruling, "This is a huge victory for journalism."
READ MORE: 'Chomping at the bit': Trump victory has red states feeling 'emboldened' to push far-right agendas
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an 10 24
t rump’s branded $60 Bibles are made in China for less than $3 apiece
3.5 million?
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oklahoma state superintendent says pastor and right-wing commentator suggested his new Bible mandate in public schools
Conservative media figures promoted the new policy as a way to “impose Christian values on the pagans” and encouraged other states to follow suit
WRITTEN BY PAYTON ARMSTRONG
PUBLISHED 07/08/24
Right-wing media figures are praising Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters’ mandate that the state’s public schools teach the Bible, including declaring that the government needs to “impose Christian values on the pagans” and encouraging other states to follow Walters’ lead.
Following his announcement of the new Bible mandate for Oklahoma's public schools, Walters has spoken with Fox News and other right-wing media to promote the policy, including appearing with a right-wing commentator and pastor who has promised to “embrace Christian Nationalism” and apparently “reached out” to Walters about mandating the Bible in schools. Notably, Walters has a history of taking education policy advice from right-wing media figures.
- ## Oklahoma Superintendent Ryan Walters, who has previously taken inspiration from right-wing media, issued a mandate requiring public schools to incorporate the Bible, including the Ten Commandments, into their curriculums
- On June 27, Walters issued a mandate directing all Oklahoma public schools to teach the Bible, including the Ten Commandments, saying, “Every teacher, every classroom in the state will have a Bible in the classroom.”The New York Times reported that Walters’ mandate “to bring religious texts into the classroom reflect a growing national movement among conservatives — particularly Catholics and evangelicals who oppose abortion, transgender rights and what they view as liberal school curriculums — to openly embrace the idea that America’s democracy needs to be grounded in their Christian values.” The New York Times, [6/27/24]
- Walters said in an interview that the mandate was inspired by former President Donald Trump.Walters told U.S. News & World Report that “frankly, a lot of our inspiration came from President Trump. President Trump has been very supportive.” U.S. News & World Report, [7/1/24]
- Walters has repeatedly appeared on Fox News, has a close relationship with BlazeTV host Steve Deace, and has previously taken inspiration for policy from a right-wing influencer.In one appearance on Deace’s show, Walters thanked the host for “responding to late night calls and texts that I've given you throughout the last couple of years.” Chaya Raichik, who runs the anti-LGBTQ social media account “Libs of TikTok,” bragged in December 2023 that she “helped inspire” Walters’ policy targeting teachers for discussing sexual orientation in the classroom. Media Matters, [10/6/23; Twitter/X, 12/21/23]
- ## After issuing the mandate, Walters appeared on several right-wing media programs and said a far-right media figure and pastor had pitched the policy
- During an appearance after issuing the mandate, Walters claimed that right-wing commentator and pastor Jackson Lahmeyer, who has promised to “embrace Christian nationalism” and previously ran for U.S. Senate in Oklahoma, encouraged him to implement such a policy last year. At Lahmeyer’s church, Walters claimed that the pastor had “documented this, he reached out, and we’ve been looking at it now for about a year,” arguing, “How do you teach history without the Bible? You can’t. It is academic malpractice.” Lahmeyer, who said in 2022 that he “will embrace Christian Nationalism,” praised Walters for issuing the mandate and suggested other states would follow his lead. Broken Arrow Sentinel, [6/30/24; Media Matters, 6/5/24; Rolling Stone, 12/27/22; PR Newswire, 10/4/22]
- Walters appeared on Fox News on June 28 to promote the mandate and also published a July 3 op-ed on FoxNews.com that dismissed the separation of church and state as “an anti-religious myth masquerading as legal theory.” On Fox News @ Night, Walters lamented that “the left has been pushing indoctrination on our kids” and “they have driven the Bible out of schools,” adding that “our founders had Christian values and they instituted them in this country.” Twitter/X, [6/29/24; FoxNews.com, 7/3/24]
- Walters touted the new school mandate in an interview on Family Research Council’s Washington Watchpodcast, claiming that “radical leftists” are trying “to put pornography in there to push your kids to be transgender, but then they claim there’s no academic value to the Bible.”Walters said, “I think it's academic malpractice not to have the Bible as a source document that's being used heavily in your schools,” and claimed that “the left has been targeting the Bible and Christianity in schools to drive the Bible out.” Guest host and former Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) told Walters that it “is so exciting to see what you're doing, and I hope there are other state school superintendents who are watching this are going to be able to see your comments here, because this not only is a great move, but it is common sense.” YouTube,[
]
- Walters touted the new school mandate in an interview on Family Research Council’s Washington Watchpodcast, claiming that “radical leftists” are trying “to put pornography in there to push your kids to be transgender, but then they claim there’s no academic value to the Bible.”Walters said, “I think it's academic malpractice not to have the Bible as a source document that's being used heavily in your schools,” and claimed that “the left has been targeting the Bible and Christianity in schools to drive the Bible out.” Guest host and former Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) told Walters that it “is so exciting to see what you're doing, and I hope there are other state school superintendents who are watching this are going to be able to see your comments here, because this not only is a great move, but it is common sense.” YouTube,[
- On War Room, Walters suggested that former Trump adviser Steve Bannon is in jail because schools don’t teach the Bible and claimed that “we've been in contact with many states across the country” about implementing a similar policy.Guest host Benjamin Hartwell praised Walters’ mandate, saying “the War Room posse are going to be absolutely thrilled to see what you're doing.” Walters predicted that if Trump wins, a similar policy could be adopted nationally, saying: “You're going to see a push from the White House to say, ‘Listen, if we're going to teach history, you’ve got to teach history the right way, so that means all states need to be adopting the same measure we have here.” Real America’s Voice, *War Room*, [7/3/24; Raw Story, 7/3/24; Foreign Policy, 1/15/23]
- Video file
Video
CitationFrom the July 3, 2024, edition of Real America's Voice's War Room
- In an interview promoting the mandate with Just the News, Walters claimed that “the radical left” has “weaponized the school system against the Bible” and “turned our schools into state-sponsored atheist centers.”Walters also vowed that “there will be a Bible being taught from in every classroom here in the state,” and host John Solomon said that Oklahoma is “a test bed for what future education is going to look like.” Just the News, [7/2/24; Real America’s Voice, Just the News No Noise, 7/2/24]
- Video file
Video
CitationOn the July 2, 2024, edition of Real America's Voice's Just the News No Noise
- ## Right-wing media cheered Walters’ mandate and urged other states to follow suit
- On Fox News, pastor Robert Jeffress cheered the mandate and said that “our children are perishing in immorality, addictions, gun violence, and transgender confusion, all because we have forgotten God.” Jeffress, a frequent Fox guest and a former Trump adviser, declared he’s “all for” the mandate, explaining: “What people forget, Trace, is that for the first 150 years of our country’s history, Bible reading, prayer, learning the Ten Commandments was part of a normal classroom experience. It was just in the last 60 years that the left has been in a rabid effort to remove any acknowledgment of God from the public schools. … There is a scripture verse that says where there is no word from God, the people perish. And our children are perishing in immorality, addictions, gun violence, and transgender confusion all because we have forgotten God. I thank God for men like Ryan Walters who are helping return our country to its historic Judeo-Christian faith and foundation.” Fox News, *Fox News @ Night*, [6/29/24;
- Texas Monthly, August 2019; Media Matters, 1/30/20]
- Video file
Video
CitationFrom the June 28, 2024, edition of Fox News' Fox News @ Night
- Newsmax host Chris Plante framed the mandate as “a counter” to LGBTQ pride and Black Lives Matter flags, saying, “Maybe we should have something normal in the classroom.” Plante said: “I think the wind is shifting. This is almost part and parcel of the same thing, because after years of the usual cast of characters, the lefties demanding that you have a rainbow flag in every classroom and a Black Lives Matter flag in every classroom, and all their political statements be on the walls everywhere and be part of the curriculum. Now normal people are saying, well, what about, you know, the 99% over here? Maybe we should have something normal in the classroom.” He later called Walters’ new policy “a counter to all of the left-wing mandates in classrooms from the pride flags and the twerking and all of the other left-wing stuff that had been inflicted on children in classrooms in schools.” Newsmax, *Chris Plante The Right Squad*, [6/28/24]
- Video file
Video
CitationFrom the June 28, 2024, edition of Newsmax's Chris Plante The Right Squad
- On X (formerly known as Twitter), Steve Deace shared Walters’ announcement of the school Bible mandate and said: “My man!”Twitter/X, [6/27/24]
- Right-wing pundit and education activist Christopher Rufo also shared Walters’ announcement on X and said: “Good.” Rufo has been a leading figure behind the scare campaign against supposed “critical race theory” in public schools, and he has also fearmongered about and waged campaigns against the LGBTQ community. Twitter/X, [6/27/24; Media Matters, 6/23/21, 2/2/23]
- Emerald Robinson, a far-right pundit and host for MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s media outlet, praised the order, saying, “This is the way: impose Christian values on the pagans.”Twitter/X, [6/27/24; The Daily Beast, 1/17/22]
- Right-wing outlet Townhall promoted Walters’ school Bible mandate in a piece headlined, “Why Every State Needs to Follow In Oklahoma's Footsteps.”Townhall, [6/29/24]
- A column at right-wing outlet PJ Media described the policy as “a natural reaction to the stories that seemed to crop up daily about teachers including DEI, CRT, and LGBTQ elements in class curricula.”The article concluded, “The Bible is a gold mine of information and perfectly suits an academic atmosphere,” adding that Walters’ mandate has “the potential … for a resounding success.” PJ Media, [6/28/24]
- Right-wing outlet The Western Journal posted an article praising Walters’ mandate titled “Hope: Oklahoma Putting Bible Back in Schools After Louisiana Brings 10 Commandments Back.”The article lamented that “leftists and Democrats across the board are going to argue against the move,” adding that, “In reality, the Bible, and the moral code embedded in it, laid the groundwork for all of Western civilization.” The Western Journal, [6/28/24]
- Gab founder Andrew Torba, who has pushed both Christian nationalism and antisemitism, seemingly endorsed the mandate: “Balkanization is accelerating. Tribe up. Get to a state where your tribe dominates and has control. Isolate and drive out anyone who threatens your dominance.”Gab, [6/27/24; Business Insider, 10/23/22]
Related
10/06/23 12:18 PM EDT
- ### Top Oklahoma education official Ryan Walters cheers conspiracy theorist while appearing on her show
01/02/24 5:10 PM EST
07/12/23
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July 8, 2024 rww
- MAGA pastor Jackson Lahmeyer prayed over Oklahoma school superintendent Ryan Walters and heaped praise upon him for “bringing [God] back into the public schools, saying ‘Jesus, you are welcome in the classroom in the state of Oklahoma.'”
- David Barton says that “if you’re educated, you know that the greatest single source, according to the University of Houston, that shaped the U.S. Constitution is the Bible. Thirty four percent of all their quotes surrounding the creation of that document came out of the Bible.” This is untrue and Barton knows it.
- Mark Robinson, the GOP gubernatorial nominee in North Carolina, claims that when the delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 were at a stalemate, they went to church and “prayed for wisdom from God to finish the Constitution.” That never happened.
- Now that “likes” are no longer publicly visible on Twitter, neo-Nazi Jon Miller says his antisemitic Holocaust-denying content is getting a lot more likes since people—like Kevin Sorbo, apparently—no longer “have to worry about it being public.”
- Gordon Klingenschmitt
“there’s some faggotry happening in the male priesthood.”
- Finally, Rep. Michael Cloud asserts that those who are elected to office must hold a “biblical worldview” because so many of “the basic core principles” of how society should operate are found in Deuteronomy and Leviticus.
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rww 6 24
Oklahoma Superintendent Orders Public Schools to Teach Bible as White Christian Nationalists Go ‘On Offense’
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Oklahoma woman facing murder and kidnapping charges chaired rural county’s GOP - Alternet.org
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mma 2 24
:{:{T.W. SHANNON (FORMER OKLAHOMA HOUSE SPEAKER): Listen to this: We've had 2 million people cross into this country illegally because of this open border policy. Many of them are from al Qaeda. I just did an op-ed on Fox.com that talks about how Chinese nationalists — the Chinese party is actually in the United States in rural Oklahoma. }:
:{:{And the worst that he can come up with as a threat to democracy is his political opponent. That sends shivers down my spine. Every American should be concerned when the president of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, considers his political opponent a threat to democracy. }:
That's a problem. Our Founding Fathers are rolling over in their graves. Joe Biden should be ashamed. And the truth is the real threat to democracy are the policies of Joe Biden like the open border that's destroying this country. It is poisoning the bloodline in this country because we are allowing illegals to vote. We're supplying them with all types of resources.}:}:
HARRIS FAULKNER (ANCHOR): Alright, T.W. I'm going to step in for one second. We're going to go now, I'm asking my team. This is the former president.
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an 3 24
in August of 2023, Politico reported that right-wing billionaire Leonard Leo is "best known as Donald Trump's White House 'court whisperer," having "played a behind-the-scenes role in the nominations of all three of the former president's Supreme Court justices and promoted them through his multi-billion-dollar network of nonprofits."
Caroline Ciccone, president of the watchdog Accountable.US, told Politico "Leo spent years stacking the court with ideological kindred spirits. Now he's funding a dark web of special interest groups to push an extreme agenda."
According to a Monday, March 18 report published by Rolling Stone, the billionaire — "long averse to media attention" — in a recent podcast interview first reported by Accountable.US "spoke about his $1.6 billion dark money fund, called the Marble Freedom Trust, explaining: 'We’re trying to really institute a lot of legal and social change through philanthropy.'"
The conservative activist, according to Rolling Stone, "also offered his thoughts on how billionaires can help conservatives limit regulations, take over corporate C-suites, reshape America’s education system, and influence our culture," and as a "devout Catholic, additionally discussed his interest in reforming religious institutions."
Speaking "with Joe Lonsdale, the co-founder of surveillance company Palantir and the University of Austin, a conservative alternative college he started with journalist Bari Weiss," Rolling Stone notes, Leo said, "It’s really important that we flood the zone with cases that challenge misuse of the Constitution by the administrative state and by Congress," urging "the ultra-wealthy to support these litigation efforts."
Referring to the conservative-majority high court, he emphasized, "We have a great Overton window in the next couple of decades to really try to create a free society. And I think we should take full advantage of it."
Additionally, as a proponent of the effort to establish a publicly funded religious school in Oklahoma, Leo also "talked about the need to reform the clergy," during the interview, saying, "This is one that I just started thinking about, there’s the whole issue of clergy, and this is a tough one to crack. This may not be for everybody, but my own perspective is: God made us to know him, to love him, and to serve him. And I think our religious leaders need to center more on that, and less on knowing, loving, and serving ourselves, and whatever personal desires or affections we may have."
Furthermore on the subject of education, the billionaire added, "We need to create talent pipelines for K-12 education and for higher ed, something like you’re doing with the University of Austin, so that we remind people that the purpose of higher ed, for example, is to basically build a citizenry that’s committed to the Constitution as it was originally written."
Rolling Stone reports "Leo explained this means recruiting teachers and working to influence education board races, 'so that we can begin to have some sanity and local education.'"
READ MORE:Leonard Leo allies lead effort to establish publicly funded religious school
*Rolling Stone's full report is availableat this link (subscription required)
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Finally, what happens when you elect a Christian nationalist pastor like Dusty Deevers to a seat in the Oklahoma state Senate? You get lectured about how pornography is a tool of Satan and must therefore be outlawed so that people “can be set free” and give their lives to Jesus.
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February 9, 2024 rww
- North Carolina’s Christian nationalist Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson participated in Charlie Kirk’s “Freedom Night In America” event held Thursday night in Charlotte, North Carolina.
- Oklahoma’s Christian nationalist state Sen. Dusty Deevers proclaims that “because the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever, the chief end of civil government is to honor and uphold the purpose of man by protecting the innocent, punishing the evildoer, and promoting that which is good.”
- Michigan’s Christian nationalist state Rep. Josh Schriver defends his promotion of the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory.
- Christian nationalist Mark Gonzales falsely claims that it was pastors in the “Black Robe Regiment,” not the military, that won the American Revolution: “It wasn’t the American army, it was the church that did that.” None of that is true.
- Finally, hundreds of Christian nationalists gathered for a “FlashPoint” event in Colorado on Thursday where they collectively decreed and declared that the U.S. government will honor God, pass only laws that are righteous, and issue only rulings that are biblical: “The blood of Jesus protects and covers our nation.”
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Meeting to censure Oklahoma GOP senator was 'held illegitimately': report - Alternet.org
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rww January 29, 2024
Far-right pastor Dusty Deevers was elected to a seat in the Oklahoma state senate during a special election in December. Deevers ran as an unapologetic Christian nationalist, vowing to apply “the word of God to every issue” and to push to abolish abortion, pornography, and no-fault divorce, Upon taking office, Deevers immediately introduced legislation that seeks to enshrine those campaign promises into law.
Last Friday, Deevers
the “Conversations That Matter” program, where he perfectly encapsulated the Christian nationalist worldview and bluntly laid it out for everyone to see.
:{:{“Governing is about the use of authority and what is the standard for the use of authority,” Deevers[
]}:
(https://youtu.be/HYPd7YHE8iI).
“God prescribes servants of his to govern as his mediators on this Earth. So, he has prescribed governing and then he has also prescribed the means for our governing and that means is in accordance with his word. If we do otherwise, then we are essentially usurping the sovereign role of God through Christ, who has been seated above every power in Heaven and on Earth and under the Earth.”}:
“So, that’s our marching orders, and it’s pretty straightforward,” Deevers added. “If you want to talk about Christian nationalism, [this is] what we mean by a Christian nation.”
Deevers asserted that forcing non-Christians to live in country governed exclusively according to the Christian nationalist interpretation of the Bible is an example of Christian “grace,” as such a system of government leads to “the best life for anyone and everyone whether they believe in [God] or not.”
“They’re getting a measure of grace from being in proximity to the true Christianity,” Deevers declared. “Whenever Christians are voted into office, it’s not just good for Christians, it’s good for the wicked as well.”
“[God has] spoken his word how the world is to be ordered and that ordered good is the best life for anyone and everyone whether they believe in him or not,” he continued. “So, it is a grace to all under the jurisdiction of a Christian leader who will bow the knee to Christ, it’s a grace to all of them.”
There is no room for compromise or consensus in politics, Deevers stated.
“Either you’re coming under the rule of God, your Creator, who is also gracious and sent his son, or you’re going to come under the rule of the serpent,” Deevers proclaimed. “So, it’s a serpentine theocracy or a rule of God, and there’s not a space in the middle.”
“Jesus is king and we obey him, and anything he says to do is what is best, and it will happen and accordance with his will and his timing,” Deevers said. “I won’t play politics if you think that there’s a space to take God’s rule and reign and to tamper with it and to practice cunning with the Scriptures.”
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rww 1 24
william Vaillancourt @ The Daily Beast: Newsmax Airs Alarming Discussion of Civil War With Federal Government.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and Newsmax host Carl Higbie mused Thursday about a potential “force-on-force” conflict between Texas and the Biden Administration after the Supreme Court ruled against the state’s Republican governor by declaring that federal agents can remove razor wire laid along the border with Mexico.
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January 23, 2024 rww
- Justin Rohrlich @ The Daily Beast: ‘Libs of TikTok’ Creator Now Advising Oklahoma School Libraries.
Chaya Raichik—who doesn’t even live in Oklahoma—was tapped for her expertise on the “radical left” and “woke indoctrination.”
- Nathalie Baptiste @ HuffPost: Ryan Walters Smears Oklahoma Educators While Proposing New Rules.
The controversial Oklahoma state superintendent of schools suggested, without evidence, that the state teachers union and educators were creating a culture that allowed for rampant sexual misconduct against students.
- Robert Downen @ The Texas Tribune: Email sheds new light on Texas House candidate Jared Woodfill’s role in Southern Baptist leader’s sex abuse scandal.
Woodfill has been endorsed by Attorney General Ken Paxton despite his connection to Paul Pressler, a prominent religious figure accused of rape.
- Brian Kaylor and Beau Underwood @ Public Witness: Josh Hawley’s ‘Christian’ Nation.
After fist-pumping for Christian Nationalism and running away from the truth, Hawley doubled down on his effort to undo our constitutional system.
- Tori Otten @ The New Republic: New Transcript Blows Up James Comer’s Entire Hunter Biden Argument.
A new transcript from a key Hunter Biden witness undercuts many of the claims Republicans are making about “Biden corruption.”
- Charisma Madarang @ Rolling Stone: Trump Attempts to Describe Missile Defense: ‘Ding, Ding, Ding, Boom, Whoosh!’
The former president resorted to sound effects when explaining missile defense systems during a campaign rally in New Hampshire.
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2016
oklahoma](https://ballotpedia.org/Oklahoma) held an election for the president of the United States on November 8, 2016. The Democratic and Republican parties held primary elections for president on March 1, 2016.
HIGHLIGHTS
- Donald Trump won Oklahoma in the general election. In 2016, Oklahoma had seven electoral votes, which was 1.3 percent of the 538 electoral votes up for grabs and 2.6 percent of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the general election.
- Between 1904—the first year Oklahoma cast electoral votes in a general election for president—and 2016, Oklahoma voted for the winning presidential candidate 72.41 percent of the time. In that same time frame, Oklahoma supported Republican candidates for president more often than Democratic candidates, 65.52 to 34.48 percent. The state favored Republicans in every presidential election between 2000 and 2016.
- Democratic and Republican primaries took place in Oklahoma on March 1, 2016. Bernie Sanders won the Oklahoma Democratic primary with 51.9 percent of the vote. Ted Cruz won the Oklahoma Republican primary with 34.4 percent of the vote.
General election candidates and results
Candidates
See also: Ballot access for presidential candidates
The candidate list below is based on an email exchange between Ballotpedia and a public information officer for the Oklahoma State Election Board on September 19, 2016. The candidate names below appear in the order in which they were provided to Ballotpedia—not necessarily the order in which they appeared on the ballot in November.
Presidential candidates on the ballot in Oklahoma
☑ Donald Trump/Mike Pence (Republican) 65%
☐ Gary Johnson/Bill Weld (Libertarian) 7%
☐ Hillary Clinton/Tim Kaine (Democratic)
2020 United States presidential election in Oklahoma
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › 2020_United_States_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election_in_Oklahoma)
In this election Trump also became the first presidential candidate ever to win more than a million votes in Oklahoma. Biden, however, came within 3,326 votes* ...
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2017
while about seven in 10 Americans identify with some branch of Christianity, the share of U.S. adults who describe themselves as Christians dropped by nearly 8 percent between 2007 and 2014, according to a survey by Pew Research Center.
But while Americans as a whole have become somewhat less religious in recent years – largely due to an increase in the share of people who do not belong to any organized faith – those who are religious are even more devout than they were a few years ago, according to the Pew report. (The sum of the percentages of the population that practices each religion may not equal 100 because of rounding.)
These are the most religious states in America, according to the Pew survey.
- North Carolina
In North Carolina, 65 percent of adults are highly religious, according to Pew’s index. While 39 percent attend worship services at least weekly, nearly three-quarters say they believe in God with absolute certainty. Of North Carolina adults, 77 percent are Christian, 20 percent are unaffiliated with any religion and about 3 percent are non-Christian faiths, the largest share being Jewish.
8 (tied). Oklahoma
Pew categorizes 66 percent of Oklahoma adults as highly religious because 65 percent pray daily and 71 percent say they believe in God with absolute certainty. Of Oklahoma adults, 79 percent are Christian, 18 percent are unaffiliated with any religion and about 2 percent practice non-Christian religions, with those of Jewish, Islamic and other faiths each making up less than 1 percent of Oklahoma adults.
}:
8 (tied). Georgia
Two-thirds of Georgia adults are highly religious, according to Pew, because 74 percent of adults say they believe in God with absolute certainty and 64 percent say religion is very important in their lives. Of Georgia adults, 79 percent are Christian, 18 percent are unaffiliated with any religion and about 3 percent are non-Christian faiths.
- West Virginia
About 69 percent of West Virginia adults are considered highly religious because while 46 percent attend worship services at least weekly, 77 percent of adults say they believe in God with absolute certainty and 68 percent pray daily. Of West Virginia adults, 78 percent are Christian, 18 percent are unaffiliated with any religion and about 3 percent are non-Christian faiths.
- South Carolina
Pew considers 70 percent of South Carolina adults highly religious because 69 percent say religion is very important in their lives and two-thirds say they pray daily. Of South Carolina adults, 78 percent are Christian, 19 percent are unaffiliated with any religion and about 3 percent are non-Christian faiths.
- Arkansas
In Arkansas, 70 percent of adults are categorized as highly religious by Pew’s index because 77 percent of adults say they believe in God with absolute certainty and 70 percent say religion is very important in their lives. Of Arkansas adults, 79 percent are Christian, 12 percent are unaffiliated with any religion and about 1 percent are non-Christian faiths.
- Louisiana
About 71 percent of Louisiana adults are considered highly religious by Pew because 75 percent say they believe in God with absolute certainty, while 68 percent pray daily. Of Louisiana adults, 84 percent are Christian, 13 percent are unaffiliated with any religion and about 2 percent are non-Christian faiths, the largest share being Buddhist at about 1 percent.
- Tennessee
Pew considers 73 percent of Tennessee adults highly religious – 78 percent say they believe in God with absolute certainty, while 51 percent attend weekly worship services. Of Tennessee adults, 81 percent are Christian, 14 percent are unaffiliated with any religion and about 3 percent are non-Christian faiths.
1 (tied). Mississippi
In Mississippi, 77 percent of adults are classified as highly religious because 74 percent say religion is very important in their lives and 75 percent pray daily. Of Mississippi adults, 83 percent are Christian, 14 percent are unaffiliated with any religion and about 2 percent are non-Christian faiths.
1 (tied). Alabama
Pew categorizes 77 percent of Alabama adults as highly religious because 82 percent of adults say they believe in God with absolute certainty, while 73 percent pray daily. Of Alabama adults, 86 percent are Christian, 12 percent are unaffiliated with any religion and about 1 percent are non-Christian faiths.
10 Most Religious States
- Alabama (tie)
- Mississippi (tie)
- Tennessee
- Louisiana
- Arkansas
- South Carolina
- West Virginia
- Georgia (tie)
- Oklahoma (tie)
- North Carolina
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Crazy alert! Oklahoma GOP files bill to ban those very scary 'furries' from schools - Alternet.org
Trump is leaning hard on SCOTUS, just like he did on Mike Pence. Will members of the Supreme Court get the Pence “gallows” next? Will they cave to his threats and promises?Trump’s ability to avoid going to jail for his many crimes, and to get revenge on those who’ve tried to hold him to account, is now largely in the hands of the Supreme Court. They’ll soon be hearing cases deciding both his claim of absolute presidential immunity and whether he can be kept off the ballotby state authorities under the 14th Amendment’s provision declaring that any person who’s engaged in or provided aid and comfort to an insurrection can’t hold public office. And now he’s lobbying them hard, from trying to sweet-talk them on Hannity’s show to threatening them with “chaos and bedlam” if he doesn’t get his way.
Mitt Romney’s book tells how multiple Republican senators chose to vote against impeaching him because they were terrified that he’d send his foaming-at-the-mouth hoards against them like he did Romney, two Black election workers in Atlanta, and Nancy Pelosi’s husband. This is how fascists typically seize and hold power: using intimidation and the fear of violence, using well-publicized but controversial people as examples.
Judge Cannon in Florida is acting like she’s been cowed by his threats. He’s apparently loving how E. Jean Carroll is describing the terror she experienced (he amplifies it at every occasion by showing up in the courtroom and discussing it in the media), as he did with Shea Moss and Ruby Freeman: in both cases, Trump’s calculation is that those stories will cause anybody who may cross him to think twice. Like a mob boss, he wields fear more effectively than any other emotion.
So far, it looks like the Court is inclined to help him out; they could have decided either case quickly but are dragging them both out for weeks, presumably to help him get to the election without a conviction and with the stay in place on ballot removal. None of these judges want to be the ultimate villain: the person who prevented Donald Trump from becoming president with the stroke of a pen. Keep an eye on these cases.
— “Largest presidential grift in history”: House Democrats dropped the hammer on Trump and Kushner.Congressman Robert Garcia (D-CA) told the nation, during a floor speech before the House of Representatives, that “Donald Trump and his family, especially the Kushners, participated in the largest presidential grift in history.” And, following up on an investigation and report from the House Oversight Committee, Garcia brought the receipts:
“We have records of 24 governments funneling millions into Trump properties and into Donald Trump’s pockets while he was president, all in violation of the U.S. Constitution,” Garcia claimed, noting Trump was in violation of the Constitution’s emoluments clause that forbids presidents from taking payments from foreign governments. “And,” Garcia added, noting that most of Trump’s transactions are still secret, “this is just the tip of the iceberg.” He added:
“Despite the attempted cover-ups, we can still prove that Trump and Jared Kushner were making national security decisions while he and his family were getting bribed and paid by the same foreign powers.”
Meanwhile, Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are desperately trying to tie President Biden into some of the skeezy deals his son was involved with; so far they have no evidence, but claim that won’t stop them from trying to impeach Biden so Trump can claim he’s not the only impeached candidate running in 2024. Just like their sudden opposition to funding Ukraine, these pathetic members of the house and Senate put their reputations and their careers over their country. That’s as craven as it gets.
— A new report finds half of the inflation America has experienced since the pandemic is caused by corporate price-gouging.A new report from the think tank Groundwork Collaborative documents how obscene corporate profits caused about 53% of the inflation we all suffered under during the second and third quarters of last year. While prices consumers paid last year went up 3.4%, for example, the “input costs” (raw materials, rent, electricity, wages, benefits) to big corporations only went up 1%, drawing from data supplied by the Bureau of Economic Analysis and National Income and Products Accounts.
This is happening because in 1983 Ronald Reagan instructed his DOJ, FTC, and SEC to stop enforcing the Sherman Anti-Trust and other anti-monopoly laws, leading to a decade of “Mergers & Acquisitions Mania” as was documented in Michael Douglas’ “greed is good” movie, Wall Street.
The first president since then to begin enforcing century-old anti-trust law is Joe Biden, although his administration has only put their toe in the water: they’re blocking new mergers, but have not yet begun breaking up giant companies like Roosevelt and Taft did at the turn of the 20th century and Gerald Ford did with AT&T in the 1970s. The only solution to this problem will be for Biden to get more aggressive and, by breaking up America’s corporate monoliths, restore some competition to the marketplace.
— Billionaires ask for higher income taxes and even a wealth tax: is anyone listening?A group of over 250 billionaires and multimillionaires presented an open letter to the attendees of the “Billionaire Woodstock” at Davos, Switzerland this week. Calling for higher taxes on the morbidly rich, these wealthy people wrote:
“Our request is simple: we ask you to tax us, the very richest in society. This will not fundamentally alter our standard of living, nor deprive our children, nor harm our nations’ economic growth. But it will turn extreme and unproductive private wealth into an investment for our common democratic future.”
Valerie Rockefeller and Abigail Disney led the charge, with a letter that was both blunt and concerned:
“We are also the people who benefit most from the status quo. But inequality has reached a tipping point, and its cost to our economic, societal and ecological stability risk is severe — and growing every day. In short, we need action now.”
The group Patriotic Millionaires published a new poll of rich people showing that fully 74% are in favor of higher taxes on their own class. An additional 58% supported a 2% wealth tax like Elizabeth Warren has supported for years, and 54% said straight out that extreme wealth is a threat to democracies around the world. Nonetheless, Republicans will go to the mat to protect or pass tax cuts for the morbidly rich, no matter how badly they damage our economy and the American middle class.
— This is what happens when rabid anti-abortion freaks take over: a woman gets 30 years in prison after her baby dies.Lilian was 19 years old when she went into labor with complications and gave birth in a hospital. Her baby was struggling from the beginning and, despite the neonatal unit and incubator, died after a few days.
The local prosecutor — without any evidence — decided on his own that the baby’s death was “proof on its face” that Lilian must not have been “careful” during her pregnancy and charged her with homicide: she was just released from prison after serving 8 years of her 30-year sentence. Lilian is one of nearly a hundred women who’ve had this happen over the past decade in El Salvador, the country that Ronald Reagan famously and illegally“saved from socialism” by supporting rightwing death squads, leading to the death of more than 75,000 civilians in a bloody civil war.
The rightwingers have run the country ever since, and one of their first accomplishments was to put draconian penalties on abortion that have, for decades, been enforced against women who had simple miscarriages or complex births leading to fetal death. The country is now re-examining some of the cases, most of which have no evidence other than the prosecutors’ assertion, leading to as many as 70 women being released from long prison sentences over the ongoing objections of outspoken rightwing legislators, some will affiliations to the American Republican Party.
This is the vision the GOP has for America, and is already being acted out in some states, like with the case of Brittany Watts, who had a miscarriage at home; one of Ohio’s rightwing county prosecutors nearly sent her to prison last month until nationwide publicity forced him to back down. From the Republicans’ point of view, on the issue of abortion and birth control, they’re just getting started.
— Why the discovery that Greenland is losing ice faster than we knew is concerning.Scientists with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratories have foundthat Greenland’s massive ice sheets are shedding fresh water about 20% faster than earlier believed. The island nation is now dumping around 33 million tons of fresh water into the North Atlantic every hour, threatening to shut down the Great Ocean Conveyor Belt thermohaline ocean circulation patterns that bring warmth to northern Europe and stabilize crop yields all over the world. The movie The Day After Tomorrowis premised on just this scenario, although it collapses decades of weather transition into a few days. This could be one of the most dangerous and dramatic consequences of our ongoing addiction to fossil fuels.
— Crazy Alert! Oklahoma Republican submits legislation to deal with the crisis of kids using litter boxes in school.He’s not the first to be freaked out: ever since a group punked a group of conservatives who’d taken over a school board by claiming that kids were becoming “furries,” the story has acquired an outsized following on rightwing hate media and with GOP politicians. In New Hampshire, for example, US Senate candidate Dan Bolduc told supporters at a campaign event:
“We have furries and fuzzies in classrooms. They lick themselves, they’re cats. When they don’t like something, they hiss… and get this, get this, they’re putting litter boxes [in schools] for them.”
While there’s never been a case of “furries” ever documented in any school anywhere in America, the worry about them continues to provoke Republican legislators seven years after the joke was revealed and debunked. The most recent suckeris Oklahoma Republican State Representative Justin Humphrey, the same guy who earlier introduced legislation require women seeking an abortion to get written permission from “the fetus’ father.” These guys are a living, breathing advertisement for the need to teach civics and critical thinking skills in our public schools.
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Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters praised conspiracy theorist DeAnna Lorraine during a nearly 25-minute interview on the December 19, 2023, edition of her show. Walters and Lorraine also spread a conspiracy theory about supposed Marxist infiltration in Oklahoma public schools, and Walters touted his efforts “to ensure that we're running the left wing out” in order “to put folks that share our conservative values in this agency.”
Lorraine is a former Infowars host and failed congressional candidate with a long record of spreading outlandish conspiracy theories, including Pizzagate and the QAnon conspiracy theory. (In recent posts, Lorraine said that “Q is the greatest Psyop ever told” and “we’ve been played.”) She also attended the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and has proposed that we “arm our children” to stop school shootings. Her streaming show, Shots Fired with DeAnna Lorraine, is part of the media network of white nationalist Stew Peters, who has spread extreme and violent rhetoric including calling for the deaths of LGBTQ people, journalists, Democratic politicians, and Catholic charity workers.
As Oklahoma’s state superintendent, Walters has pushed right-wing propaganda into public school curriculum and used far-right media programs to attack the state’s education system and teachers. Walters appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press days before his interview with Lorraine, arguing that he is responding to a “higher education push to drive left-wing, Marxist propaganda into classrooms.” Walters previously suggested that he has taken education policy advice from right-wing media personalities, including the anti-LGBTQ social media account Libs of TikTok and a BlazeTV pundit who disparages public schools as “Satan’s youth ministry.”
In the December 19 Shots Fired interview, Walters claimed that Oklahoma’s “education system has been run by Marxists for far too long” and the host agreed, suggesting there has been a communist plot since the 1950s to take over public education. Lorraine also compared the left to “cockroaches” after Walters claimed that “liberals embed themselves” in government agencies. He referred to the state superintendent’s office under his Democratic predecessor as “a captured entity,” and bragged to Lorraine: “I fired over 100 people from our agency in the first six months, and we are continuing to ensure that we're running the left wing out, and we're going to put folks that share our conservative values in this agency.”
Walters also claimed that George Soros — a frequent target of antisemitic conspiracy theories — has “financed” school boards and “government bureaucratic apparatuses.”
:{:{Video}:
CitationFrom the December 19, 2023, edition of Stew Peters Network's Shots Fired with DeAnna Lorraine
DEANNA LORRAINE (HOST): Ryan Walters, I'm excited to talk about you and all of these great wins under your belt. You are just slaying the Marxist left back and forth. Welcome to Shots Fired, how are you?
RYAN WALTERS: (OKLAHOMA STATE SUPERINTENDENT): Look, I appreciate you having me on. I appreciate the work you're doing. And, you know, I mean, that's the thing in education — to get the education system back on track when it's been pulled so far to the left, we have got to operate with a sense of urgency. And so we're playing offense here in Oklahoma. We're going to be aggressive and we're just getting started. But I'm telling you, this education system has been run by Marxists for far too long. Parents know it, our taxpayers know it, and it's time to get going.
LORRAINE: Oh 100%. And some people somehow still believe that this is sort of some big conspiracy theory that the education systems have been hijacked by the Marxist left and, you know, this all sort of happened organically. No, it's not. It's literally in the communist goals. The 45 communist goals for America way back in the 1950s. They state that they want to hide, they're going to hijack the education systems and schools and transform them into Marxist, communist curriculum. So it's not a conspiracy and it's actually happened, and they've been very successful at it.
…
WALTERS: I think that's so important for your viewers to hear is that we are in a very red state, very red state. Every single one of our counties voted for Donald Trump twice, so we are a very red state. But let me tell you, we also have a teachers union who is very well-financed and continue to block legislation and push legislation at the state capital. They have captured a lot of Republican legislators who listen to them alone. And so we've had to fight back against some of them, some folks in our own party who have fought school choice, fought parents rights. We had a legislator that’s Republican that fought to keep pornography in the classroom. And so we have these pockets of influence the teachers union has. But I'm going to tell you, the other thing that's so important is now that I run the education agency is liberals embed themselves in these agencies. So you've seen this with the way —
LORRAINE: Like cockroaches.
WALTERS: George Soros has financed these district attorneys. They've done the same thing with school boards, and they've done the same thing with the government bureaucratic apparatuses. So when I got here, you know, we would pass laws and it wouldn't be enforced because again, my predecessor, a Democrat, loaded this agency up with a bunch of liberals that were never going to hold districts accountable. They were never going to push back on the teachers union. And frankly, this was a captured entity. I mean, the left had captured the state superintendent. So you can pass whatever laws you wanted, they were never going to be enforced on the schools. So it has been a dramatic shift. I fired over 100 people from our agency in the first six months, and we are continuing to ensure that we're running the left wing out, and we're going to put folks that share our conservative values in this agency. And we're going to continue to fight for parents, and we're going to continue to fight — it’s frankly common sense. We're going to keep fighting for common sense to come back to the classroom.
Lorraine and Walters ended the interview praising each other, with the host telling Walters, “You are on fire. I love what you’re up to. I love what you’re doing. Keep going at it because we need strong fighters like you to fight for our schools and our children.”
Walters replied with effusive praise, telling Lorraine, “I love your show, love what you’re doing,” and “I appreciate you fighting for conservative principles and values and your fight for our kids. So really appreciate the time on the show and thank you for the work you’re doing.”
:{:{Video}:
CitationFrom the December 19, 2023, edition of Stew Peters Network's Shots Fired with DeAnna Lorraine
LORRAINE: Ryan Walters, you are on fire. I love what you're up to. I love what you're doing. Keep going at it because we need strong fighters like you to fight for our schools and our children. Tell everybody again where they can find you and follow your awesome work and achievements.
WALTERS: Well, I appreciate that. I love your show, love what you're doing.
...
WALTERS: But look I appreciate the time. I appreciate you fighting for conservative principles and values and your fight for our kids. So really appreciate the time on the show and thank you for the work you're doing.
LORRAINE: Thank you so much, Ryan.
Walters promoted the interview on X (formerly Twitter) by reposting a link from Lorraine to the interview with the caption “OK Superintendent of Education is on FIRE slaying the Marxists!”
//
10/06/23 12:18 PM EDT
07/12/23 12:06 PM EDT
09/07/23
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/bless-your-heart-klansplaining-crt blackburn
[[ https://www.mediamatters.org/white-nationalism/remarks-oklahoma-public-schools-superintendent-mirror-far-right-extremist-talking
https://www.alternet.org/oklahoma-judge-rulsa-race-massacre/ judge toss case 100 yo 3x
https://boingboing.net/2023/07/07/oklahoma-schools-superintendent-says-tulsa-race-massacre-wasnt-um-about-race.html ]]
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https://www.alternet.org/the-right-wing/unconstitutional-oklahoma-superintendent-calls-for-framed-copy-of-10-commandments-in-every-class/
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an 4 23 // alt rt macho shitposting?
https://www.alternet.org/appalled-and-disheartened-oklahoma-governor-demands-resignation-of-officials-who-condoned-and-lynching/
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recall trump hdhs ice head was tracking menstrual cycles
They're whining that "globalists" are trying to control everyone. Meanwhile, the Republicans in Oklahoma are pushing a bill that would create a database for pregnant women so they can track if they get abortions.
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an 12 21
deep red Oklahoma, one of the state’s top Republicans, along with his wife, is facing multiple felony charges and the possibility of up to ten years in prison if convicted, according to the Associated Press.
The Republican is Terry O’Donnell, who serves as speaker pro tempore of the Oklahoma House of Representatives. O’Donnell, AP reports, is accused of “misusing his power to change state law so his wife, Teresa, could become a tag agent.” But Mack Martin, O’Donnell’s attorney, told AP that O’Donnell denies breaking the law in any way.
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an 10 21
why a second high-profile Republican in Oklahoma just left the GOP
A second Oklahoma GOP gubernatorial candidate has switched party affiliations over the GOP's opposition to COVID-19 health precautions, inviting other "like-minded...
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prOSECUTORS AND LAWMAKERS in several states have responded to mass protests against police brutality by charging demonstrators with committing felonies, including terrorism charges. The trend of criminalizing protest has been on the uptick since the 2016 protests against the Dakota Access pipeline at Standing Rock, during and after which numerous states upped charges for protests “near critical infrastructure” as felonies.
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Since 2016, 14 states have enacted new laws to restrict the right to peaceful assembly,a**ccording to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, which tracks related state and federal legislation. But in the wake of the nationwide movement in support of Black lives, numerous states have increased the severity of criminal penalties for protesters along political lines and are prosecuting them more aggressively, as demonstrations continue with no sign of slowing down.
just last week, following more than 60 days of demonstrations outside the State Capitol, Tennessee Republican Gov. Bill Lee signed a law that made it a felony to participate in some types of protests, including camping out overnight on state property.Charges for the same activity were previously classified as a misdemeanor. In Tennessee, people convicted of felonies lose their voting rights — making the new law a tool for disenfranchisement.
Earlier this month, police in Muscatine, Iowa, apprehended two people they say were attempting to drive a vehicle into the city Public Safety Building and got stuck on a planter. They charged both men with numerous counts, including terrorism. That follows an Oklahoma district attorney’s pursuit ofterrorism chargesagainst five young people, including three teenagers and two people in their 20s. The fourth-term prosecutor also threw felony charges at numerous other people in relation to protests and damage to local and police property in late May.
The terrorism charges reveal a “false equivalency between people who kill, and people who commit acts of property damage,” said Kate Chatfield, policy director at the Justice Collaborative, a policy and media organization focused on mass criminalization and incarceration. “Maybe not a great thing.”
“To say that the power of the state will be wielded in this way against political enemies is incredibly frightening,” Chatfield said, drawing a parallel to the post-9/11 era, when many people who had never committed an act of violence were prosecuted for terrorism. “Let’s not ignore the fact that we have a history of this in this country. A very recent history. And a continuing history, unfortunately.”
The nationwide protests prompted by George Floyd’s killing have continued through the summer, though at a lower intensity over the last month — before picking back up this week. Streets across the country swelled with demonstrators after police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot 29-year-old Jacob Blake in the back seven times, in front of his children. Blake is paralyzed from the waist down, his father told the Chicago Sun-Times on Tuesday. Protesters burned down a state Department of Corrections building on Monday. The following night, armed white members of a militia group organized counterdemonstrations to protect local property. Video footage from Kenosha shows the militia members chatting with the police. Shortly after the video was captured, one member of the militia shot and killed two protesters, and left a third in serious condition. Police arrested 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse in Illinois on Wednesday and charged him with first-degree intentional homicide.
“When you hear our president talk about Black Lives Matter as a terrorist organization, or antifa as a terrorist organization, it is the kind of thing that — his statement holds no weight in law, but it sends a message to prosecutors like this that they’ll be supported,” said Thomas Harvey, justice project director at the Advancement Project, a non-profit civil rights group. “And even more frighteningly, I think it sends a message to people like the militia members we saw in Kenosha, and gives them the state and the latitude to commit even more violence than what we see on a daily basis in this country against black and brown folks.”
IN SOME STATES where police have charged protesters en masse with felonies, prosecutors have swiftly dropped them, calling into question the reasoning behind the original charges.
In Louisville, Kentucky, police arrested 87 protesters who had staged a sit-in on the lawn of a home belonging to state Attorney General Daniel Cameron last month — part of an ongoing call for accountability in the killing of Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old EMT whom three Louisville police officers shot at least eight timesinside her home in March. (The officers were acting on a no-knock warrant in connection with a suspect who did not live at Taylor’s residence. The police department fired one of the three officers who were involved in June. Local activists including Louisville Black Lives Matter worked with Taylor’s family to develop a list of demands, including firing, charging, and convicting the three officers.) Three days later, Jefferson County Attorney Mike O’Connell dismissed the felony charges and said his office would consider misdemeanors and other violations for prosecution at a later date. On Tuesday, Louisville police arrested another 68 protesters and charged them with obstructing a highway and disorderly conduct, both misdemeanors.
Earlier this month in Washington, D.C., police arrested 41 protesters in the Adams Morgan neighborhood on charges of felony rioting and assaulting police officers. The Metropolitan Police Department said in a tweet on August 14 that it only arrested people “engaged in rioting behaviors.” Between May 30 and June 1, District police arrested more than 100 people on charges of burglary, destroying property, and violating curfew, including at least 40 charges of felony rioting.Prosecutorsdropped most of the charges in both sets of arrests.
In Salt Lake City on Friday, a judge droppedpossible life sentence charges facing protesters who poured paint, broke windows, and posted signs at the District Attorney’s Office building, reducing some charges to lower-class felonies and misdemeanors. In June, West Valley police and FBI agents arrested two men in Salt Lake who had allegedly threatened officers and were headed to protests armed with multiple weapons. Prosecutors later charged one man with terrorism.
Also in early June, police officers in Columbia, South Carolina, arrested more than 80 protesters and charged three men with instigating a riot, typically a low-level felony or misdemeanor.
Elected officials participating in the protest have also been caught in the crackdown.In Portsmouth, Virginia, on Monday, sheriff’s deputies delivered a summons charge to the vice mayor, after a resident pressed misdemeanor criminal charges against her for calling on the Portsmouth police chief to resign. Earlier this month, police brought felony charges against the Virginia State Senate pro tempore, a local school board member, local NAACP leaders, and public defenders for injury to a monument and conspiracy, in relation to the destruction of confederate statues in June.
Federal authorities have also carried out their own crackdown on demonstrations, arresting protesters in Portland, Oregon, and New York City in recent months. The FBI has opened some 300 domestic terrorism investigations since late May. Last year, according to the agency, most federal arrests for domestic terrorism involved white supremacy, though the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit has also investigated a fictional “black identity extremists” movement. The FBI has also quietly investigated white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement in recent years, The Intercept reported.
AMONG THE MOST serious recent charges against protesters are those of terrorism in Oklahoma. There,Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater charged three teenagers and two other people in their 20s with terrorism related to their alleged activity during protests in late May.
“We found it especially inappropriate — and unconstitutional — because it was made with the explicit purpose of silencing protesters who are standing up for Black lives,” American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma Staff Attorney Megan Lambert told The Intercept, regarding the recent terrorism charges. “We didn’t even see terrorism charges for the Murrah bombing,” she added, referring to the 1995 bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City.
Read Our Complete CoverageProtests for Black Lives
The terrorism charges, which were filed in June and July, stem from allegations that protesters set fire to a sheriff’s van and caused damage to a local bail bond business. Last month, Prater charged two other teenagers with terrorism in connection to demonstrations at the end of May, bringing the total to five. The DA also charged multiple people with rioting, assaulting officers, andat least five others for incitement to riot for painting murals in the city’s downtown area in June.
Oklahoma Democratic Party Chair Alicia Andrews, the ACLUof Oklahoma, and Oklahoma City Black Lives Matter founder and Executive Director Rev. T. Sheri Dickerson slammed Prater’s move, saying that the charges of terrorism were far too harsh. During a press conference early last month, Andrews said she didn’t condone vandalism or destruction of property but that Prater was using the charges to silence protesters. “‘Use your First Amendment right in a way that we don’t like, and we will ruin your future.’ These charges are an attempt to send a message, ‘We’re tired of hearing about Black lives,’” she said.
Prater took office in 2007 and is currently serving his fourth term as DA. His current term ends in 2023.He started his career in law enforcement at age 19 as a deputy sheriff, according to his bio. “These people are speaking out against violence that Prater himself has largely been complicit in,” Lambert said. “This is just another example in a pattern from David Prater’s office of upholding white supremacy.” Prater’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Last May, Prater declined to charge officers who killed 17-year-old Isaiah Lewis, who was in the middle of a mental health crisis when police shot him in Edmond. Over the last few months, local activists have brought renewed attention to Lewis’s killing, which has been a focus of some demonstrations in the area. Other cases have gotten less attention, Dickerson pointed out. Derrick Scott, 42, died last May after being apprehended and restrained by Oklahoma City police. In video footage of the arrest released in June, Scott tells officers he can’t breathe and asks them repeatedly to give him his medicine. An officer replies, “I don’t care.”
“The Scott family is not receiving any justice,” Dickerson said, adding that Scott’s killing was eerily similar to Floyd’s. Earlier this month, police shot 32-year-old James Harmon in the head, saying that he had a weapon in his hand (Oklahoma is an open-carry state). Harmon is still in the hospital.
“Systemic racism, institutional racism, and white supremacy is so deep-rooted,” Dickerson said, agreeing with Lambert’s characterization of Prater’s office. “There’s really nothing more Oklahoman than that.”
“This was a state that was formed basically for them to literally lump Natives and Blacks here together,” she said. “And so it has always been very intentional and deliberate, for us to be victims of what I consider state-sanctioned violence and state-targeted violence.”
For the Oklahoma City teens and young adults facing terror charges, “what’s next is they fight for their lives,” Lambert said. The statute carries a maximum of life in prison. “Many of these charged protesters are young teenagers. … So they are facing spending their entire lives in prison simply for, in some cases, attending a protest to try and hold police accountable.” Criminal defense attorneys are still working to get those charges dropped or significantly reduced.
“Some of the young people were saying, ‘We should go to Kenosha and stand with the young people there,” Dickerson said. “And I was like, ‘How do you choose?’”
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320 new drilled/heated
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In Oklahoma, students are told "Having no petroleum is like a nightmare!"
Before her retirement in 2016, Tara Barker was a public school science teacher in Oklahoma for 33 years. Throughout her tenure, she taught her kids about fossil fuels using Petro Pete—a little boy who looks like an old man dressed as an oil worker.
Petro Pete is part of an education series on fossil fuels proliferated by the Oklahoma Energy Resources Board, a state agency funded by oil and gas producers. According to The Guardian, the OERB “has spent upwards of $40 million over the past two decades on providing education with a pro-industry bent, including hundreds of pages of curriculums, a speaker series and an after-school program—all at no cost to educators of children from kindergarten to high school.”
Barker said the industry’s lesson plans and workshops were helpful to her. “I loved getting the materials,” she said. But the outcome of the lessons always left her feeling like something was missing. “I just felt like they didn’t finish the story,” she said. “They didn’t tell the whole thing.”
The missing things, it turns out, were climate change and renewable energy. Neither is mentioned in “Petro Pete’s Big Bad Dream.”
In this widely taught story, Pete drifts off to sleep and wakes up unable to find anything he normally depends on. He has no clothes; no toothbrush; no comb. His schoolbus never comes, so he walks to school, and when he gets there the clock has a sad face on it. During lunch, Pete wants strawberry ice cream, but there is none. Later, he goes out to play soccer, but there are no soccer balls. “Pete is disappointed,” it says.
Eventually, Pete’s science teacher—the appropriately named Ms. Rigwell—explains that all the things Pete was missing were either made by oil or made possible by oil. “Having no petroleum is like a nightmare,” Pete concludes.
Barker said saw Petro Pete have an impact on students. “It makes the kids feel like, ‘Oh wow, we really need this,’” she said. “It scares them that we’re going to run out.” She said she wanted to make sure she was teaching about the possibilities of renewable energy, too—but the oil industry didn’t provide free material on that. She had to develop that curriculum herself, on her own time.
Today, that alternative curriculum is called the Oklahoma Renewable Energy Education Program. “We call it the other side of the story; the compliment to it,” Barker said. Barker’s group is trying to hold workshops for teachers across the state just like the oil and gas industry does, and have the curriculum accepted in all of Oklahoma’s school districts. But she’s struggling with funding. “We don’t have a grant right now, so we’re using leftover materials and we’re working on what we have.”
The oil and gas industry, of course, does not have this problem. And its bid to influence public education extends far beyond Oklahoma.
Creating pro-fossil fuel kids across the country
There are many more state-specific examples of fossil fuel industry and interest groups funding educational material. The Ohio Oil and Gas Energy Educational Program, for example, is an industry-funded effort to provide workshops and educational material for Ohio teachers. These materials include a worksheet on the environmental benefits of crude oil and gas, a crude oil word find, and an activity placemat for kids.
Culver Company, a consulting firm for energy and natural gas utilities, provides educational material for schools, including aworkbook from kids Grade 3-6. In Natural Gas: Your Invisible Friend, “youngsters explore where gas comes from, how it’s used, and why it’s important to be careful around natural gas,” the description says.
Then there’s the National Energy Education Development Project, or NEED Project, which is sponsored by more than 100 corporate partners, including nearly every major U.S.-based oil and gas company and oil industry interest group. The NEED Project “publishes thousands of pages of K-12 energy lessons online,” according to the non-profit education news publication the Hechinger Report. Those lessons include one where students learn “how to frack a frozen layer cake using chocolate syrup and a syringe-like turkey injector.” Another guide tells the story of Sue Ann, “a sticky pool of oil waiting to be freed.”
These educational materials are not all misleading in their own right. Many actually contain scientifically robust information about how fossil fuel extraction and power generation work. But when these materials aren’t paired with robust climate change education, they paint a false picture in students’ minds about the benefits of fossil fuel use.
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PRUITT STARTED IN RAGA
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fed overreach BS?
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https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/how-an-oklahoma-prosecutor-launched-malicious-probes-against-criminal-justice-reformers/
no lnx
How an Oklahoma prosecutor ‘launched malicious probes against criminal justice reformers’
Photo of DA Prater via Oklahoma County DA’s office
Written by Filter October 28, 2019
by Rory Fleming
Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater stands accused of firing his investigator for refusing to conduct a bogus criminal probe into supporters of decarceration efforts.
That is according to a Notice of Claim?—a legal document that must be submitted before suing Oklahoma’s state government?—filed on October 24 and reviewed by Filter.
Oklahoma County includes Oklahoma City and, with around 750,000 residents, is the most populated county in the state. DA Prater’s reported general behavior has echoes of McCarthyism and the Red Scare.
William Muller?—a former Oklahoma County DA office investigator, whose law enforcement career includes time on President George W. Bush’s security detail?—alleges that DA Prater demanded he obtain a Multi-County Grand Jury Subpoena for the financial records of Oklahomans Criminal Justice Reform, a nonprofit advocacy organization.
Kris Steele, the former speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, is the executive director of this organization; a probe of Steele was separately ordered. Prater also started a retaliatory probe against the American Civil Liberties Union, focusing on its financial contributions to reform efforts.
Muller initially complied but later refused, saying there was no probable cause—the usual legal threshold for a criminal investigation. Prater also exhibited apathy toward the legal rules about the proper handling of evidence, the Notice claims.
When Muller told Prater that he couldn’t sniff anything out, Prater gave him the cold shoulder. Then, in late January 2019, Muller gave an internal presentation on an unfurling political corruption case. Seemingly out of nowhere, Prater “called two Oklahoma County Sheriff’s Deputies into the office where then [he] lost control of himself and began to yell and curse uncontrollably,” states the Notice.
Prater also personally seized Muller’s firearm, it is alleged, then had the deputies kick Muller out of the building. He then announced Muller’s firing to a law enforcement email list that spans the entire state.
In the context, none of this is even surprising.
A 2015 article from the Oklahoman recounts Prater’s reputation for “tackling crime,” or at least defendants he is prosecuting. He ignores the political decorum expected of prosecutors, having once endorsed Reverend Paul Blair, a hateful fundamentalist who spreads Islamophobic conspiracy theories, for state senate. He has been accused by fellow lawyers, most notably those working on Richard Glossip’s potential innocence case, of witness intimidation.
And he despises even the mildest positive changes to the criminal justice system, as exhibited by his war against his own voters. When Oklahomans, including his constituents, voted by ballot initiative in 2017 to make drug possession a misdemeanor (rather than a felony), Prater unsuccessfully labored alongside anti-reform allies like former Sen. Ralph Shortey (who shortly thereafter went to federal prison for child sex trafficking), to reverse the popular mandate.
Robert D. Gifford, II, the attorney representing William Muller, is a former Assistant US Attorney who has dedicated most of his career to getting justice for the most defenseless victims. One of his most notable cases was the prosecution of Matthew Durham, the young missionary who raped Kenyan orphans as young as six years old.
In a conversation with Filter, Gifford likened Prater to Richard Nixon and called him “the poster boy for prosecutorial misconduct.” He added that, “but for a whistleblower, Mr. Prater’s misuse and abuse of secret grand jury subpoenas would have never come to light.”
On top of being an example of how prosecutors can wreak havoc on their communities when given too much power, Prater’s alleged misconduct shows how it is crucial for district attorneys to have opponents when they come up for re-election.
Prater skated to re-election in 2018 without an opponent, despite a cornucopia of reasons for him to be booted out of office. Hopefully, 2022 won’t tell the same story. Or the Oklahoma State Bar wises up and disbars him, before he does anything worse.
This article was originally published by Filter, a magazine covering drug use, drug policy and human rights. Follow Filter on Facebook or Twitter.
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desmog
Oklahoma
Earthquakes caused by fracking wastewater injections were a major topic in the race for corporation commissioner in Oklahoma. The corporation commission oversees the oil and gas industry in the state.
One of the main issues Ashley McCray, a 34 year old former activist, was running on was limiting fracking wastewater injection wells to reduce related earthquakes in Oklahoma. Her opponent was the Republican Bob Anthony, who has held the position for 30 years and whose campaign was financed with help from railroad and energy companies, including BNSF, Chesapeake Energy, American Electric Power, and Koch Industries, as well as from fracking pioneer and billionaire Harold Hamm.
While McCray only managed to gain 34 percent of the vote, the local paper The Journal Record credits her campaign with shedding more light on just what the powerful corporation commission does. Industry-caused seismic activity has been a hotbed issue in Oklahoma for years and has managed to cross typical party lines.
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In the midst of the colossal upset that saw progressive African-American Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum win the Democratic nomination for the Florida governor race, another lesser-known but huge development unfolded in Oklahoma, giving Democrats a clear chance to win the governor's mansion there.
In the runoff elections on Tuesday night, pro-Trump Tulsa businessman Kevin Stitt defeated Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett to win the GOP nomination. He will now face off against former Democratic state attorney general Drew Edmondson, who already won the nomination in June — which is shaping up to be a truly competitive race.
Republicans blew a huge potential advantage by not nominating Cornett, who has campaign experience and is known for bringing the NBA to his state. Stitt, by contrast, has never held elected office, faces questions about his mortgage company's business practices, and said he opposes the badly-needed recent pay increases that ended the state's teacher walkouts.
Edmondson, by contrast, is the Democrats' dream candidate — a Vietnam veteran who has already won statewide office multiple times and has decent name recognition. One poll released in July showed Edmondson leading the race by one point with Stitt as the nominee.
Oklahoma is one of the reddest states in America. It is one of only two stateswhere President Donald Trump carried every single county. But Democrats have held the governor's mansion as recently as 2011.
Republicans in Oklahoma are also reeling from voter resentment amid the massive unpopularity of retiring Gov. Mary Fallin, who oversaw reckless tax cuts that collapsed the state's finances and crippled state agencies. The teacher strikes only scratch the surface — under Fallin's tenure, rural hospitals have shuttered, waiting lists for community help for the elderly and disabled have stretched to 10 years, and there is even a driving limit on state troopers to ration fuel.
In an ominous sign for Republicans, Tuesday night's runoffs also saw the defeat of half a dozen GOP state lawmakers who voted against the tax increase to fund teacher pay— which cannot inspire confidence for a gubernatorial nominee who claimed he would not have signed it.
The upshot is that Democrats now have a real chance to win in a heavily red state, and punch deep into Trump territory. They should heed the anger of voters hurt by GOP misrule, and fight for them.
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COAL
Okla. firm tops midterm donations
E&E Daily: Thursday, August 23, 2018
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/oklahoma-gop-candidate-denies-advocating-euthanasia-poor-and-disabled-people
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Official PAC Name:
Location: ,
Industry: FEC Committee ID: C00167213 (Look upactual documents filed at the FEC)
okla leadrship council GOP
https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/expenditures.php?cycle=2016&cmte=C00167213
1Republican Party of Florida$132,0002Direct Mail Systems$32,8933Renaissance Hotels$31,9704Republican National Cmte of Pennsylvania$30,0005Mayo Hotel$18,8316Marriott Tulsa Hotel Southern Hills$13,8257Brogdon, Randy$8,5178Hilton Hotels$7,5009Petroleum Club of Okc$7,22510Vanco Payment Solutions$6,172
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http://www.alternet.org/environment/oklahoma-sues-epa-calling-clean-air-rule-unconstitutional
Oklahoma sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday, claiming it exceeded its powers by proposing new rules to reduce pollution at coal-fired power plants.
Attorney General Scott Pruitt sued the EPA in Federal Court, claiming its plan to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions in the next five years is unconstitutional.
Oklahoma claims the agency's timeline for its Clean Power Plan is unrealistic, and that it will need a minimum of eight years to implement the changes.
[clean pwr plan video 101]
RELATED: U.S. Supreme Court Strikes Down Obama's EPA Limits on Air Pollution
"In sum, due to the EPA Power Plan, simply maintaining electric service across the State of Oklahoma requires substantial expenditures of time, effort, and money by the Oklahoma Legislature, OCC [Oklahoma Corporation Commission], ODEQ [Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality], and other state actors, as well as private utilities," the complaint states.
"These expenditures cannot be recouped. If the State does nothing while EPA implements anything like a 35.5-percent reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions from Oklahoma's coal-fired power plants, the lights will go out in many Oklahoma communities, impacting State governmental operations, as well as the health and welfare of citizens. The same is true of the 33 percent 'interim goal' set by EPA and would be true of even a substantially smaller goal, on the order of 15 or 20 percent."
Pruitt claims that the plan would require "the complete restructuring of Oklahoma's power sector even though it has no chance of surviving eventual judicial scrutiny."
RELATED: GOP Congressman Lamar Smith Declares War on NASA and EPA Climate Science Research
He claims the plan violates at least three statutory bars and two constitutional limitations on federal power. Pruitt said the state can challenge the plan in the D.C. Circuit under Section 307 of the Clean Air Act, but expects it would take at least nine months for a final decision to be issued.
"Even if Oklahoma is able to obtain a stay of the EPA Power Plan in the D.C. Circuit, that is still likely to take months," according to the 19-page complaint. "By that time, Oklahoma will have either implemented or taken irreversible steps towards implementing most, if not all, of the changes described above, meaning that they will be implemented even though the EPA Power Plan is certain to be invalidated. The ordinary petition process under Section 307 is not an adequate means of obtaining the relief required if Oklahoma is to maintain its power sector in anything like the form it exists today and if it is to forgo the massive expenditure of resources required to accommodate the EPA Power Plan."
Federal officials could not be reached for comment after business hours Wednesday.
RELATED: EPA Moves to Regulate Airplane Emissions Under Clean Air Act, Citing Danger to Human Health
Pruitt said in a statement late Wednesday that the plan "forces Oklahoma into fundamentally restructuring the generation, transmission, and regulation of electricity" in a way that threatens the "reliability and affordability" of electricity in the state. He said that decisions on power generation and emissions reductions are best made at the local level.
"The EPA does not possess the authority under the Clean Air Act to accomplish what it proposes in the unlawful Clean Power Plan," Pruitt said. "The EPA is ignoring theauthority granted by Congress to states to regulate power plant emissions at their source. The Clean Power Plan is an unlawful attempt to expand federal bureaucrats' authority over states' energy economies in order to shutter coal-fired power plants and eventually other sources of fossil-fuel generated electricity."
Pruitt seeks declaratory judgment that the EPA Power Plan violates the Clean Air Act and "exceeds Congress's Article I authority and violates the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution." He seeks an injunction preventing its enforcement.
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Citizens Can Sue Fracking Companies for Earthquake Damage, Says Oklahoma Supreme Court
==
http://www.alternet.org/personal-health/5-most-dangerous-states-live-and-5-safest
According to the study, the five safest states to live in are Massachusetts, Vermont, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and Hawaii.The least safe states to live in are New Mexico, Tennessee, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Mississippi. Massachusetts is the state with the lowest share of residents who lack health insurance, the second fewest number of fatal occupational injuries, and the second lowest rate of fatal automobile accidents.=
==
Oklahoma scientists pressured to downplay link between earthquakes and fracking
Oil company execs and university bigwigs leaned on the Oklahoma Geological Survey so it wouldn’t blame quakes on fracking techniques.
==
former AG, gov cand: BS BS: Okla dem http://ballotpedia.org/Oklahoma_Attorney_General_-_Drew_Edmondson
Drew was personally involved in overseeing the tobacco litigation, involving multiple defendants and billions in damages, as well as the state’s litigation against the poultry industry alleging violations of state and federal environmental laws. He was also involved in the state’s prosecution of Bernie Ebbers in the Worldcom case.
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alternet 5/14
3. Oklahoma Bans Increases in the Minimum Wage
While the Obama administration raises the minimum wage threshold for private contractors working with the government, Democrats in Congress push for a $10.10 minimum wage, and Seattle votes in the country’s highest minimum at $15.00 an hour, Oklahoma is going in the exact opposite direction: not only is Oklahoma not considering a statewide increase, but it banned individual cities [6] from even considering such a raise on their own.
The move was widely viewed as a preemptive attack on a movement by the Central Oklahoma Labor Federation to raise the Oklahoma City’s wage to $10.10, in line with that being called for by President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats.
Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin and her fellow Republicans in the legislature argued [7] the bill created a “level playing field for all municipalities in Oklahoma” and protected against “artificial” raises in the minimum wage, whatever those are.
"Mandating an increase in the minimum wage would…would create a hardship for small business owners, stifle job creation and increase costs for consumers," Fallin said. "And it would do all of these things without even addressing the goal of reducing poverty."
Not quite. The statistics on the relation of minimum wage to job creation or loss are murky, but most studies find raising the wage’s overall affect on employment to be negligible. Two things raising the minimum wage definitely does: increases earnings for lower-income workers (by $33 billion in the case of a nationwide raise to $10.10) and lifts almost one million people out of poverty. Neither is something metropolises in Oklahoma are going to find out about any time soon.
4. Oklahoma Punishes Solar and Wind Power Producers
Oklahoma wasn’t done. Unhappy with people who install their own solar panels or wind turbines, an action that helps the utilities by easing the pressure on the companies during peak hours, the state is now penalizing private energy producers through a surcharge [8].
The extra charge applies to those who sell excess energy generated by the panels or turbines back to the grid, known as net metering. It was snuck in as a rider on another bill at the last minute, catching lawmakers and alternative energy groups off guard. It passed without a single dissenting vote.
It didn’t take long for Oklahoman owners of small businesses to point out the absurdity of a law that punishes in-state producers of energy.
“Oklahoma offers tax credits for large wind turbines which are built elsewhere, but wants to penalize small wind which we manufacture here in the state?” Mike Bergey, president & CEO of Bergey Windpower said [8]. “That makes no sense to me.”
Who would support such a bill? The ultra-conservative advocacy group ALEC, which has framed people with solar panels as “freeriders on the system,” though they actually contribute to the city’s power resources. ALEC is in good with Fallin. Thanks to this cozy relationship, Oklahoma is set to become the first state to pass a law of this kind. Where states have deals worked out between utility companies and individual power generators, ALEC is set on repealing them. They now have a template in a last-minute sabotoage in Oklahoma.
==
alec win
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/04/16/3427392/oklahoma-fee-solar-wind/
Oklahoma residents who produce their own energy through solar panels or small wind turbines on their property will now be charged an additional fee, the result of a new bill passed by the state legislature and expected to be signed into law by Gov. Mary Fallin (R).
On Monday, S.B. 1456 passed the state House 83-5 after no debate. The measure creates a new class of customers: those who install distributed power generation systems like solar panels or small wind turbines on their property and sell the excess energy back to the grid. While those with systems already installed won’t be affected, the new class of customers will now be charged a monthly fee — a shift that happened quickly and caught many in the state off guard.
“We knew nothing about it and all of a sudden it’s attached to some other bill,” Ctaci Gary, owner of Sun City Oklahoma, told ThinkProgress. “It just appeared out of nowhere.”...
As the use of solar power skyrockets across the U.S., fights have sprung up in several states over how much customers should be compensated for excess power produced by their solar panels and sold back to the grid — a policy known as net metering. Net metering laws have come under fire from the secretive American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group backed by fossil fuel corporations, utility companies, and the ultra-conservative Koch brothers. Forty-three states and the District of Columbia currently have net metering policies in place and ALEC has set its sights on repealing them, referring to homeowners with their own solar panels as “freeriders on the system.” ALEC presented Gov. Fallin the Thomas Jefferson Freedom award last year for her “record of advancing the fundamental Jeffersonian principles of free markets, limited government, federalism and individual liberty as a nationally recognized leader.”
Oklahoma “could be the first complete defeat for solar advocates in their fight against utility efforts to recover costs lost to DG [distributed generation] use,” writes Utility Dive. Net metering survived attacks in Colorado and Kansas and Vermont recently increased its policy in a bipartisan effort. Last year, Arizona added what amounts to a $5 per month surcharge for solar customers, a move that was widely seen as a compromise, particularly after ALEC and other Koch-backed groups got involved.
While any extra charge placed on potential customers is a concern, Gary hopes that like Arizona, Oklahoma’s fee is modest enough to protect her business from serious damage.
Matt Kasper, energy research assistant at the Center for American Progress, contributed to this piece.
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Oklahoma
Titled, the “Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act,” H.B. 1551 is also essentially a copycat of Tennessee's version of the ALEC model bill — it failed to pass. A Senate version of that bill, S.B. 320, was also proposed in 2009, but failed to pass through committee.
Key clauses of that bill read (emphases mine),
"[T]eachers shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories pertinent to the course being taught."
"[N]o student in any public school or institution shall be penalized in any way because the student may subscribe to a particular position on scientific theories."
Notice how the first bullet is exactly the same in both the Tennessee and Oklahoma bills — also notice how similar bullet number two is in both language and substance in both states' bills.
Rep. Sally Kern (R-84), sponsor of H.B. 1551, is a member of ALEC, according to CMD. She received $12,335 from the oil and gas industry in the 2008 and 2010 election cycles, in total, according to FollowTheMoney.org. Sen. Randy Brogdon (R-34), sponsor of S.B. 320, while not a member of ALEC, received $22,967 from the oil and gas industry while running and losing for Governor of Oklahoma in 2010, according to FollowTheMoney.org.
On the whole, sponsors and co-sponsors from the six states in which the ALEC bill was proposed were recipients of $44,409 in campaign money from the oil and gas industry, a miniscule down payment for some of the most lucrative corporations known in the history of mankind.
==
ALEC Assembles "Most Wanted" List, and Oklahomans Say "ALEC Is Not OK"
by Brendan Fischer [1] — May 6, 2013 - 7:44am
- Topics: Corporations [2], Democracy [3], Politics [4]
- Projects: ALEC Exposed [5]
[6]
-- by Brendan Fischer and Nick Surgey --
In anticipation of protests at ALEC's recent meeting in Oklahoma City, state legislators were handed a set of talking points [7] that read "The American Legislative Exchange Council recognizes the first amendment rights of free speech and assembly, and asks that ___ do the same," apparently to prepare legislators for press questions about citizen activism. But ALEC didn't live up to those spoon-fed talking points: ALEC assembled a dossier of disfavored reporters and activists, kicked reporters out of its conference who might write unfavorable stories, and managed to boot a community forum critical of ALEC from its reserved room.
In what might be the biggest anti-ALEC rally yet, the ALEC legislators and lobbyists arriving at the Renaissance Hotel on May 2 were greeted by awave of protesters [8] that outnumbered the conference attendees.
More than 600 firefighters, teachers, environmentalists, and church leaders carried signs reading "ALEC is Not OK" and chanting "backroom deals are ALEC's game/sweetheart deals for corporate gain," while a giant inflatable pig wearing a banner reading "Hi, my name is ALEC" floated overhead. Two big rigs adorned with Teamsters logos circled the convention center, honking their horns and blowing air brakes. Harold A. Schaitberger, President of the International Association of Fire Fighters, told the crowd that ALEC's "sole purpose is to develop the most anti-worker, anti-employee, anti-union, anti-middle class, pro-business, pro corporation policies, legislation and agenda possible."
Inside, white men in dark suits milled in the lobby of the Renaissance Hotel and the neighboring Cox Convention Center. Laughter floated through the hotel bar as corporate lobbyists (with a "private sector" tag on their name badge) huddled with state legislators (wearing "public sector" tags).
Fresh-faced interns hustled through the crowds, appearing exhilarated to be in the midst of dealmaking and power brokerage. Oklahoma City Police Officers in full uniform -- but reportedly off-duty and paid by ALEC -- stopped anyone not wearing a name badge from entering ALEC's sections of the convention center.
"We Know Who You Are"
On the morning of May 3, Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin -- an ALEC "Legislator of the Year" in 2009 -- gave the ALEC meeting's keynote address. The short, relatively generic speech was the only portion of the ALEC event open to the press: the task force meetings where prospective "model bills" are discussed and adopted were entirely closed-door and guarded by police.
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TULSA, Okla. (AP) — Oklahoma and Texas have argued for years about which has the best college football team, whose oil fields produce better crude, even where the state border should run. But in a hot, sticky dispute that no one wants to win, Oklahoma just reclaimed its crown.
After recalculating data from last year, the nation's climatologists are declaring that Oklahoma suffered through the hottest summer ever recorded in the U.S. last year— not Texas as initially announced last fall.
"It doesn't make me feel any better," joked Texas rancher Debbie Davis, who lives northwest of San Antonio.
In the new tally by the National Climatic Data Center, Oklahoma's average temperature last summer was 86.9 degrees, while Texas finished with 86.7 degrees. The previous record for the hottest summer was 85.2 degrees set in 1934 — in Oklahoma.
"I'm from Oklahoma, and when you talk about the summer of 1934, there are a lot of connotations that go with that," said Deke Arndt, chief of the NCDC's climate monitoring branch in Asheville, N.C. "That whole climate episode — the Dust Bowl — that is a point in our state's history that we still look back to as transformative."
Yet the summer of 2011, "was warmer than all those summers that they experienced during the Dust Bowl," Arndt said.
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Need That ‘A’ Grade? Try Denying Climate And Evolution
- by Judy Molland
- February 23, 2013
It’s happening in Oklahoma – again.
A bill that would prevent teachers from marking down students who turn in papers that dispute ideas like climate change and evolution was approved by the Oklahoma Common Education committeeon Tuesday by a 9-8 vote.
HB1674 states that students in science classes would be able to make totally unscientific and unfounded faith-based claims, and not be penalized for it. This is a horrible travesty of education, one that I’m sure most teachers would protest vigorously.
From Mother Jones:
Gus Blackwell, the Republican state representative who introduced the bill, insists that his legislation has nothing to do with religion; it simply encourages scientific exploration. “I proposed this bill because there are teachers and students who may be afraid of going against what they see in their textbooks,” says Blackwell, who previously spent 20 years working for the Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma. “A student has the freedom to write a paper that points out that highly complex life may not be explained by chance mutations.”
Really? So I can declare that God created the world around six thousand years ago, even though my textbook says something quite different, and get an ‘A’ in science class? Whatever happened to the inquiry method, in which students are required to develop a solid argument based on proven facts?
Of course, this is Oklahoma, the same state that has brought us Senator James Inhofe who famously stated, “Climate change is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”
Twenty-five years after the Supreme Court struck down a Louisiana law that mandated religious instruction in science classes, lawmakers in many states are still trying to water down the teaching of science and push creationism into the public schools.
It’s not just Oklahoma. Just a few weeks into the 2013 legislative session, there are already anti-evolution bills circulating in Missouri, Montana, Colorado, Indiana, in addition to Oklahoma. And in some cases, like this one, climate change has taken a prominent place, along with evolution, as a target for creationists.
These lawmakers have also changed their tactics. Take the bill proposed byMissouri State Representative Rick Brattin: HB291 would require that intelligent design and “destiny” get the same amount of textbook coverage in Missouri schools as the theory of evolution. Brattin insists that his bill is not influenced by religion. After all, the legislator has declared: “I’m a huge science buff.”
Again from Mother Jones:
Eric Meikle, education project director at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) in Oakland, California, says Oklahoma has proposed more anti-evolution legislation than any other state, introducing eight bills with academic freedom language since 2004. (None has passed.) “The problem with these bills is that they’re so open-ended; it’s a kind of code for people who are opposed to teaching climate change and evolution,” Meikle says.
“An extremely high percentage of scientists will tell you that evolution doesn’t have scientific weaknesses,” says the NCSE’s Meikle.
As Bill Nye the Science Guy puts it, denial of evolution is unique to the United States. The fundamental ideas behind the theory of evolution have been scientific gospel for decades — and yet, defying Darwin, creationists refuse to go the way of the dinosaurs.
Let’s hope this egregious bill never passes.
Related Care2 Coverage
Louisiana Uses Public Funds To Teach Creationism
And On The Seventh Day, God Created A Museum
My Senator Denies Climate Change And Oklahoma Pays The Price
http://www.care2.com/causes/need-that-a-grade-try-denying-climate-and-evolution.html
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koch
Oklahoma Facts
Based in Wichita, Kan., Koch Industries, Inc. is one of the largest private companies in America according to Forbes magazine. It owns a diverse group of companies involved in refining and chemicals; process and pollution control equipment and technologies; minerals; fertilizers; polymers and fibers; commodity trading and services; forest and consumer products; and ranching. Koch companies have a presence in nearly 60 countries and employ about 70,000 people. Since 2003, Koch companies have completed more than $32 billion in acquisitions and investments, and nearly $11 billion in capital expenditures.
- Koch companies began operating in Oklahoma more than 50 years ago, following the purchase of Rock Island Oil & Refining Company in Duncan.
- Former Koch Industries presidents Sterling Varner and Joe Moeller are both from Oklahoma.
Companies in Oklahoma
- John Zink Company, LLC’sworld headquarters is located in Tulsa. John Zink, a historic name in Tulsa and the combustion and environmental solutions business, became a Koch company in 1989. Today, John Zink Company and its affiliates are global leaders in ultra-low emission process burners, boiler burners, duct burners, flares and thermal oxidizers. The companies are also global suppliers of flare gas/vapor recovery and vapor combustor systems. The John Zink Research and Development Test Center™ in Tulsa is the world’s largest and most comprehensive of its kind; here engineers test equipment and develop innovative, leading-edge technologies. In addition, John Zink Institute™, the company’s educational organization, has earned certification of its process flares, advanced process burners and process burners fundamentals courses from the American Petroleum Institute. John Zink Company is a Koch Chemical Technology Group, LLC company.
- Georgia-Pacific Consumer Products LPhas a manufacturing facility in Muskogee that produces consumer products, including a variety of well-known brands such as Angel Soft®, Mardi Gras® and Sparkle®, as well as many of the company’s away-from-home tissue and towel products. Georgia-Pacific LLC, based in Atlanta, and its subsidiaries have approximately 300 manufacturing facilities across North America, South America and Europe, ranging from large pulp, paper and tissue operations to gypsum plants, box plants and building products operations.
- Koch Nitrogen Company, LLC owns and operates facilities in Enid that produce ammonia, UAN and urea. These plants provide fertilizer to customers in Oklahoma and the Midwest. The company and its affiliates have the capability to manufacture, market and distribute more than 10 million metric tons of fertilizer products annually.
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// hurric BS?
alternet-
Extremists posing as aid workers urge NC locals to tear down cell towers and hit military
Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer booking photo from 2018
Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer booking photo from 2018 (Courtesy Tucson Police Department)
Jordan Green November 02, 2024
A group of anti-government extremists who showed up in western North Carolina promising to provide disaster relief after Hurricane Helene is now threatening to destroy cell-phone towers and sabotage military vehicles.
The group, Veterans on Patrol, attracted attention by setting up a disaster relief staging area in the parking lot of the Ingles grocery store in Lake Lure, about 50 miles from Asheville.
But locals, including some who initially cooperated with the group, began to complain about threats and harassment.
Over the past three weeks, members of the group, which falsely claims that Helene was caused by a “weather weapon,” have been making conspiracy-driven claims that the U.S. military is attempting to kill U.S. citizens with “directed energy weapons.”
ALSO READ: Inside the grift that could cost Donald Trump the election
Veterans on Patrol’s channel on the encrypted social-media platform Telegram posted a message on Thursday displaying photos of what appears to be a cell tower on a mountaintop. The message asserted that locals “are in Live Exercises where the United States Military is permitted to destroy your homes, bodies and minds,” while suggesting that equipment on the tower “is solely for providing the U.S. military the means to murder Americans.”
“Focus on tearing down their weapons,” the message reads. It continues, “All it takes is one weapon tower being toppled with the stated reason spoken boldly.”
Another message posted in the group’s Telegram channel appears to advocate for sabotaging military vehicles and assets.
“Simple acts of pouring sugar into fuel tanks of military equipment, backup power systems, and personal vehicles of military personnel can wreak havoc on those who murdered all these people out here,” reads the message, which was posted on Wednesday.
Soldiers from Fort Liberty and Fort Campbell have deployed to western North Carolina to assist in the disaster response, along with National Guard members from nine states.
Veterans on Patrol is led by Michael Lewis Arthur Meyer, who has a long history of anti-government extremism, dating back at least 10 years. Meyer, according to the extremism watchdog group Southern Poverty Law Center, is not a veteran.
Reached by phone on Friday, Meyer doubled down on the threats.
“Jesus used bullwhips and flipped tables,” he told Raw Story. “We’re going to use our bullwhips and topple towers.”
At first during the interview, Meyer argued that the Telegram messages weren’t advocating for targeting cell towers, saying instead that the group would “surgically” remove the supposed “directed energy weapons." He went on to say that they would provide Appalachian residents with generators and Starlink boxes so they could maintain power and communication links.
Asked about the message referencing “pouring sugar into fuel tanks,” Meyer told Raw Story: “We’re going to destroy your tanks…. You want to get dirty? That’s what we should be doing.”
Veterans on Patrol has promoted multiple conspiracy theories based on false claims since arriving in western North Carolina.
One message posted on Telegram on Oct. 22 claimed that “Helene was a Weather Weapon steered to destroy the area, while also claiming that the investment fund BlackRock is attempting a “land grab” and describing the storm and its aftermath as “an act of war perpetrated against the People.”
As the final day of voting in the presidential election approaches, posts on the group’s Telegram channel have taken on an increasingly urgent tone.
The Oct. 22 post claimed that “stolen elections” are a real phenomenon, along with “weather weapons,” “Satanic pedophiles” and “adrenochrome," which refers to a QAnon conspiracy theory that a cabal of elites tortures children to extract a chemical from their bodies which is then used as a recreational drug.
In another post last week, a Veterans on Patrol member nicknamed “Shepherd” claimed that the U.S. Air Force command is instructing pilots “to deploy additional weather weapons.” The post goes on to say, “These people don’t have 2 weeks to wait for vote and 3 months to hopefully wait for a Regime change.”
Another message on the group channel that was published on Wednesday suggests without basis that Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff is the beneficiary of BlackRock’s supposed landgrab.
Speaking to Raw Story, Meyer seemed to all but dare law enforcement to intervene.
“For people to go and do something to prevent weapons from being deployed — that’s not a crime,” he said. “If they want to bring this to court and charge us with conspiracy, then let’s go.”
The FBI did not respond to an inquiry about Veterans on Patrol's activities, but Meyer told Raw Story in an email that he "would imagine the FBI knows full well what we are attempting through Operation Leaning Tower."
Meyer told Raw Story that he notified the office of Gov. Roy Cooper about his "operation." Cooper's office did not immediately respond to a voicemail message from Raw Story.
Phone calls from Raw Story for this story to officials in Lake Lure and Rutherford County, which surrounds the town, went unreturned.
Meyer’s history of extremism dates back to the Bundy Ranch standoff, when armed militants faced down the FBI and other federal agencies in 2014 during a dispute over rancher Cliven Bundy’s refusal to pay grazing fees. Meyer’s involvement in the Bundy Ranch standoff came to light later, when the Oregonian reported that he and a group of friends got into a brawl with other anti-government extremists during the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, which Bundy and a group of armed supporters had occupied.
Meyer founded Veterans on Patrol in Arizona in 2015, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Prior to presenting itself as a disaster response group in the aftermath of Helene, Veterans on Patrol has claimed its efforts were directed towards rescuing children from sex trafficking, addressing veteran suicide and dubious claims that the military is maliciously harming civilians. Meyer’s activities have frequently landed him in trouble with law enforcement.
Meyer was arrested twice in 2015 after emergency responders talked him down from a light pole in Surprise, Ariz. in 2015.
In 2018, was arrested by the police in Tucson, Ariz. for trespassing and an outstanding warrant for an assault charge, after occupying a tower on an industrial property. A press release from the Tucson Police Department claimed that Meyer “found an abandoned homeless encampment” on the property, “and fictitiously declared, without evidence or corroboration, that the area was the site of a sex-trafficking ring.”
The Tucson police said they received complaints from Tucson residents that Meyer and his followers had threatened and intimidated them, and Meyer made “multiple threatening and hostile remarks directed towards various elected and appointed officials” through social media.
In the summer of 2024, before Hurricane Helene, Veterans on Patrol was active in Spokane, Wash. In Telegram message from July 2, 2024, Veterans on Patrol announced to the police that it “would no longer be safe” for one of its officers “to work his beat.” The channel also posted the home addresses of city council members.
NOW READ: Fox News is the reason the race is close
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