Ryan Walters bowed his head in prayer at his desk in the Oklahoma state superintendent’s office.
“Dear God, thank you for all the blessings you’ve given our country,” the rising star on the Christian right said in the mid-November video. “I pray for our leaders to make the right decisions. I pray in particular for President Donald Trump and his team as they continue to bring about change for our country.”
Walters sent the video, in which he announces a new department of religious freedom and patriotism, to all public school superintendents in the state and told them to play the prayer for their students and send it to parents. Schools pushed back, as did the Republican state attorney general, who said Walter had no authority to require students to watch it and that it ran contrary to “parents’ rights, local control and individual free-exercise rights”.
