Superintendent Ryan Walters’ legal fees surpass $100,000 amid multiple lawsuits
by Tanya Modersitzki Thu, October 10th 2024 at 12:51 PM
Updated Thu, October 10th 2024 at 4:13 PM
OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLA — As Superintendent Ryan Walters sees the inside of a courtroom more with recent court dates piling up, he’s also racked up more than $100,000 in attorney fees in a five-month time span.
On Oklahoma State Court Network’s website, since last year, he’s named in eight lawsuits, not including the one involved with the State Grand Jury on alleged misspent pandemic money, and others related to the Oklahoma State Department of Education.
State Representative Mark McBride said he’s concerned how much Walters’ legal fees are costing taxpayers.
“I’m pretty confident there’s another investigation going on by the feds in the Department of Education. I think he’s 12 or 14 lawsuits,” McBride said. Walters most recent lawsuit came from the Bixby Public Schools Superintendent for alleged defamatory remarks.
From March of this year until July, records we received from Oklahoma Management and Enterprise Services show Walters averaging roughly $20,000 a month in lawyer fees. In March, OSDE paid an attorney invoice for more than $28,000.
In May, multiple invoices came out to cost more than $19,000.
In June, OSDE paid nearly another $28,000 for attorneys.
In that timespan, Walters’ attorneys cost the state more than $104,000. McBride said this is all at the cost of constituents.
“These things I think he’s going to lose at the end of the day and taxpayers foot the bill,” he said.
These totals don’t reflect charges for August, September, and October. NewsChannel 8 is working to get those numbers. Walters’ office did not respond for a comment.
“We need cis allies to speak up for us. Vote to remove the bigots from positions of power. The biggest thing you can possibly do right now is to vote. Vote for Democrats. Because, no, they aren’t perfect, and no one is. But they are a darn sight better than the alternative.”
Get ready for Donald Trump’s blue state extravaganza.
With less than four weeks until Election Day, Trump is scheduled to hold rallies in staunchly Democratic states he has virtually no chance of winning. It’s an unorthodox strategy campaign advisers say is designed to focus on areas where Democratic policies have failed, but it will also keep him away from the small handful of swing states almost certain to determine the election.
Over the next month, the former president has events scheduled in Colorado, California, Illinois and New York. President Joe Biden won those states by an average of 20 points in 2020, with his 13-point Colorado win the closest margin. Colorado is the only one of those states to vote for a Republican nominee for president this millennium, backing George W. Bush in 2004.
While each event will be held in slightly different venues, the most notable will be later this month in Madison Square Garden, a place where Trump has long said he wanted to hold political rally.
“Choosing high-impact settings makes it so the media can’t look away and refuse to cover the issues and the solutions President Trump is offering,” said a senior Trump campaign adviser of the strategy behind late-election cycle events in Democratic states. “We live in a nationalized media environment and the national media’s attention on these large-scale, outside-the-norm settings increases the reach of his message across the country and penetrates in every battle ground state.”
“President Trump is closing the campaign highlighting the problems the country faces as a result of Harris and Biden’s failed leadership and articulating his solutions to solve the problems they created,” the adviser added.
The decision to deviate from a traditional campaign playbook comes at a time when the race is almost certain to be decided in places like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Michigan, places that are within the margin of error in most public polling and considered winnable for both Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
“This does not seem like a campaign putting their candidate in critical vote rich or swing vote locations — it seems more like a candidate who wants his campaign to put on rallies for optics and vibes,” longtime Republican operative Matthew Bartlett said.
He called Trump the “most unorthodox candidate in modern history,” which means the off-script strategy could have some value.
“In 2016, Trump realigned the party to be much more rural and working class, now in 2024 he is trying to expand his voting base along certain cultural lines that may eat away at traditional Democratic voting blocs,” Bartlett said.
A second Trump adviser said that no matter where Trump holds rallies, he gets huge online viewership, including in swing states, and there is a confidence within the campaign about their chances, which in their estimation allows for some risk.
“Certainly we are bullish on our prospects writ large,” the adviser said.
Some Trump supporters argued that going into areas of the country traditionally not visited by Republican presidential candidates could have a sort-of coattail effect, helping boost down-ballot Republicans in tough races. None of the states where Trump is visiting has a competitive Senate race, but there are a handful of competitive House races in a year where the majority of that chamber will likely be decided on a razor-thin margin.
In California, House District 40 is represented by Republican Young Kim, and House District 41 is represented by Republican Ken Calvert, both of whom are in contested races in the Los Angeles media market along with Coachella, which is where Trump will be holding his rally.
In New York, Rep. Mike D’Esposito won Nassau County’s 4th district in 2022, but it is a seat that leans Democratic and was won by Joe Biden by 15 points in 2020. Flipping the seat played a big role in helping Republicans take the House majority in 2022.
“The fact that we can pickup down ballot seats with President Trump’s aggressive travel plan is a testament to the well orchestrated and effective campaign plan that focuses on unifying all Americans,” said Ed McMullen, a Trump donor who served as ambassador to Switzerland during the Trump administration.
“It is a well-planned effort to reach out and win key seats,” he added.
October 10, 1699 The Spanish issued a royal decree which stated that every African-American who came to St. Augustine, Florida, and adopted Catholicism would be free and protected from the English.
October 10, 1963 The Limited Test Ban Treaty—banning nuclear tests in the oceans, in the atmosphere, and in outer space—went into effect. The nuclear powers of the time—the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union—had signed the treaty earlier in the year. In 1957, Nobel Prize-winner (Chemistry) Linus Pauling drafted the Scientists’ Bomb-Test Appeal with two colleagues, Barry Commoner and Ted Condon, eventually gaining the support of 11,000 scientists from 49 countries for an end to the testing of nuclear weapons. These included Bertrand Russell, Albert Einstein, and Albert Schweitzer. Linus Pauling Pauling then took the resolution to Dag Hammarskjöld, then Secretary-General of the United Nations, and sent copies to both President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev. The final treaty had many similarities to Pauling’s draft. It went into effect the same day as the announcement of Pauling’s second Nobel Prize, this time for Peace.
October 10, 1967 The Outer Space Treaty (Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies) demilitarizing outer space went into force.It sought to avoid “a new form of colonial competition” as in the Antarctic Treaty, and the possible damage that self-seeking exploitation might cause. Discussions on banning weapons of mass destruction in orbit had begun among the major powers ten years earlier. 1949 painting by Frank Tinsley of the infamous “Military Space Platform” proposed by then Secretary of Defense James Forrestal in the December 1948 military budget.
October 10, 1986 Elliott Abrams, then assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (in closed executive session) that he did not know that Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, a White House employee in the Reagan administration, was directing illegal arms sales to Iran and diverting the proceeds to assist the Nicaraguan contras. Abrams pled guilty in 1991 to withholding information on the Iran-contra affair during that congressional testimony, but was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush. Elliott Abrams Presidents George W. Bush & George H.W. Bush Oliver North Read more about the pardons
October 10, 1987 Thirty thousand Germans demonstrated against construction of a large-scale nuclear reprocessing installation at Wackersdorf in mostly rural northern Bavaria.
October 10, 2002 The House voted 296-133 to pass the “Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq,” giving President George W. Bush broad authority to use military force against Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, with or without U.N. support.
(Note from Ali: I’ve seen a couple of headlines that the Don’s campaign plans to run heavy anti-trans ads in the swing states. I’ve used all my free NYT articles for life, but they have a story about it. So this is of interest to All Women.)
Black trans women are a small subset of trans voters, who make up a small portion of the electorate — but they’re also longtime leaders of the LGBTQ+ rights movement who know what’s at stake.
Five years ago, Democratic presidential primary hopeful Kamala Harris stepped onto a stage at a CNN LGBTQ+ town hall in Los Angeles.
“My pronouns are she, her and hers,” Harris said in her introduction.
Offering her pronouns, which wasn’t nearly as commonplace in 2019 as it is now, showed solidarity with transgender and nonbinary Americans. It was a simple but impactful gesture for a community in the midst of an unprecedented homicide crisis, whose rights and humanity had been challenged by former President Donald Trump, who was in office at the time, and other Republicans
In standing shoulder to shoulder with transgender people, Harris began to shift a relationship that had been dogged by decisions of her past, like her support for bills cracking down on sex work during her time as a prosecutor in San Francisco and, while California’s attorney general, her state’s opposition to gender-affirming care for an incarcerated transgender woman in 2015.
Today, Black transgender women, some of the same people who questioned her candidacy five years ago, are supporting Harris on and off the campaign trail. One way they have shown up is by raising money and drumming up support, like a Zoom call in August that was joined by more than 1,000 transgender people, the brainchild of veteran Black trans activist Zahara Bassett.
“I felt that we need to let people know that our voices are at the ballot,” Bassett said. “When we speak to you about our rights, about our visibility of being here, that needs to be respected.”
Bassett enlisted the help of several trans luminaries, including Precious Davis, who had long heard criticism of Harris among her LGBTQ+ peers. Davis, chief strategy officer of Center on Halsted, Chicago’s largest LGBTQ+ community center, said she knew it would be critical for Black trans women to show up for Harris, in part as a way of signaling to Black trans women and queer communities they had permission to vote for the vice president.
“We are a part of a community who have the most to lose,” Davis said of Black trans women. “Our rights and freedom are at stake. We have seen Donald Trump’s attacks against the trans community time and time again.”
Many LGBTQ+ advocates have argued that even if Harris has room for growth on LGBTQ+ issues, it’s nearly impossible to compare her with Trump, who regularly misgenders trans women and refers to trans people as “insane.”
“I will say that I would rather have a fighting chance with her than have no chance at all with Trump,” said Hope Giselle-Godsey, executive director of the National Trans Visibility March, another organizer of the Zoom call for Harris.
While she was roundly criticized four years ago for mixing up language in referring to transgender women, overall, Harris’ record on LGBTQ+ rights is largely viewed positively. She provided some of the earliest support for marriage equality of any presidential hopeful when, as district attorney in San Francisco, in 2004 she officiated a same-sex wedding in California. She also opposed so-called gay and trans “panic defenses,” where perpetrators attempted to claim that fear or disgust of LGBTQ+ people was reasonable motivation for attacking them.
She lost significant ground going into 2020 after her support of FOSTA/SESTA, a 2018 package of bills that aimed to crack down on websites used by sex workers. Transgender people are disproportionately forced into underground economies like sex work due to a lack of employment opportunities.
Trump, however, has fared much worse. During his four years as president, the National Center for Transgender Equality labeled his cabinet the “Discrimination Administration” and the media advocacy group GLAAD logged 210 attacks on queer people. He also barred transgender people from serving in the military, banned Pride flag displays at embassies and gutted transgender health care protections under the Affordable Care Act, among other things.
Channyn Lynn Parker, CEO of the Brave Space Alliance, which serves trans and gender nonconforming youth on the south and west sides of Chicago, speaks about both candidates with resignation. She, too, helped organize the Zoom for Harris, though less enthusiastically than her peers.
Parker has worked with street-based and unhoused youth for more than 10 years and has seen Democratic candidates come and go, all of them with different promises for the community; for example, Biden pledged to trans kids that he “had their backs.”
Meanwhile, the kids she works with still face the same challenges. Many are still kicked out of their homes by their own parents and they’re particularly vulnerable to the anti-trans laws and hate that has also flourished across the country.
“I have never seen a candidate where I feel completely safe, and I’ve ever been able to breathe a full sigh of relief, never,” Parker said. “So, I don’t know if Kamala is going to be any different in that regard.”
Black trans women are a small subset of the transgender voters, who make up a small portion of the electorate. An estimated 825,100 transgender adults of all races will be eligible to vote in November, according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. As of last year, 161 million Americans were registered to vote.
In recent years, advocates have invested heavily in giving credit to Black trans activists for leading the charge at the Stonewall uprising in 1969, where queer people famously fought back against homophobic policing in New York City.
At the same time, Black trans women have been overrepresented in the numbers of trans homicide victims and often underrepresented in the media.
At the 2019 LGBTQ+ Town Hall, where Harris introduced herself with her pronouns, Black trans women made headlines by interrupting the event repeatedly, noting that not a single Black trans woman had been invited to ask candidates a question.
The town hall also included a gaffe: Immediately after Harris shared her pronouns, CNN’s Chris Cuomo replied, “Mine too.” To transgender people, the moment highlighted how, even at an event centered on LGBTQ+ communities, transgender issues could become an afterthought. And in the four years since, Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, have repeatedly attacked transgender people; 176 anti-trans bills have become law; and none of the debates have delved meaningfully into LGBTQ+ issues.
The Black trans women backing Harris see the setbacks — and also an opportunity if Harris wins. Davis said she is ready to lobby Harris on trans issues the moment Harris takes the oath of office. Bassett has at the ready a wish list of policies that would make gender-affirming care more accessible and less stigmatized.
And Parker is clear about one thing: Supporting a candidate doesn’t mean agreeing with them unconditionally. It means challenging them to be better.
“We’re going to provide you with all the necessary tools and resources and individuals to help you to get this right,” she said. “If you don’t use those tools, meaning the individuals who are providing you with the level of access and education needed, then shame on you.”
To check your voter registration status or to get more information about registering to vote, text 19thnews to 26797.
October 8, 1945 President Harry S. Truman announced that the secret of the atomic bomb would be shared only with Great Britain and Canada.
October 8, 1982 The Polish Parliament overwhelmingly approved a law banning Solidarnos´c´ (Solidarity), the independent trade union that had captured the imagination and allegiance of nearly 10 million Poles. Solidarnosc leader Lech Walesa, 1982 The law abolished all existing labor organizations, including Solidarity, whose 15 months of existence brought hope to people in Poland and around the world but drew the anger of the Soviet and other Eastern-bloc (Warsaw Pact) governments. The parliament created a new set of unions with severely restricted rights.
Solidarnosc leader Lech Walesa, 1982
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