The far-right agitator behind notorious anti-LGBTQ social media account “Libs of TikTok”—who responded gleefully to reports this fall that her posts had inspired bomb threats in nearly two dozen U.S. states—will now be deciding what public school students in Oklahoma should be allowed to read.
Former real estate agent and Brooklyn resident Chaya Raichik has been appointed to the Oklahoma State Department of Education’s (OSDE) Library Media Advisory Committee, OSDE Superintendent Ryan Walters announced Tuesday morning.
“Chaya is on the front lines showing the world exactly what the radical left is all about—lowering standards, porn in schools, and pushing woke indoctrination on our kids,” Walters said in a statement. “Because of her work, families across the country know just what is going on in schools around the country. Her unique perspective is invaluable as part of my plan to make Oklahoma schools safer for kids and friendly to parents. Chaya has a much-needed and powerful voice as well as a tremendous platform that will benefit Oklahoma students and their families.”
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A spokesman for Walters did not respond to The Daily Beast’s inquiries about the selection process or who else sits on the committee. Raichik did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Oklahoma ranks fourth in the nation for book bans, with at least 43 titles prohibited in schools, according to free speech nonprofit PEN America. The censored works include classics such as William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by late Nobel Prize winner Maya Angelou. (Oklahoma legislators have also moved to block public libraries from offering adults certain books with a “predominant tendency to appeal to a prurient interest in sex.”)
In August, a Libs of TikTok posting about a “woke” school librarian in Tulsa prompted a flurry of bomb threats, with anxious parents keeping their kids home rather than risk potential catastrophe.
Raichik, who was highlighted in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s 2022 Year in Hate and Extremism report, uses her massive following on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, to paint the LGBTQ community as a “cult.” Teachers who express support for LGBTQ students are regularly tarred as “groomers,” and doctors who provide gender-affirming care for children have been targeted with false claims of doling out “vaginoplasties, phalloplasties, and double mastectomies,” with reckless abandon.
After Raichik shared the address of a planned drag show in Salt Lake City last year, the event had to be called off when armed Proud Boys showed up and terrified attendees. Hospitals in Washington, D.C., Boston, Seattle, Chicago, and Portland, Oregon have been on the receiving end of violent threats over Raichik’s claims that clinicians there were mutilating children. In Oklahoma, a former teacher who expressed support for LGBTQ kids rejected by their parents, was inundated with death threats following a Libs of TikTok post by Raichik, and soon resigned.
At the same time, the destruction wrought by Libs of TikTok has made Raichik a near-messianic figure among the MAGA-faithful. She has dined at Mar-a-Lago with former President Donald Trump, was invited by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to stay in his official residence, and drew adoring throngs at CPAC.
For his part, Walters, who was sworn in as Oklahoma’s education superintendent in January 2023, has compared teachers’ unions to terrorist organizations, claimed Tulsa public schools had been by Chinese government agents, and has appeared at events hosted by Moms for Liberty, a right-wing collective labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Crystal LaGrone, chair of the Wagoner County Democratic Party, said she never realized just how much damage Walters’ would continue to inflict on Oklahoma’s schools.
“Elections have consequences,” she told The Daily Beast in August. “And we get people like Ryan Walters, in positions of authority, where they really don’t have any expertise, and are attention-seeking. It feels like he wants to make a name for himself, not help the kids of Oklahoma.”
