Oklahoma's Edubro-in-Chief may not be able (or willing) to explain what exactly "woke" means, but he has announced his intention to by damn keep teachers from smuggling it into his state. Also, he's found another way to defund public schools.
Walters is a serious Trump fanboy, and that seems to include an interest in exerting powers he doesn't necessarily have. Take his new idea to "reform" the school meal system and "end bureaucratic bloat." The problem, apparently, is that taxpayers paid money for students to eat food last year. And somehow this is related to administrative bureaucracy? Here's part of his explanation:
Last year, Oklahoma families were slapped with a staggering $42 million bill for school meals—on top of their taxes—while administrators pocketed a 14% salary hike. This isn’t just incompetence; it’s a betrayal of our kids and communities. “Oklahoma taxpayers are being triple-taxed to cover lunches while bureaucrats fatten their wallets,” said State Superintendent Ryan Walters. “We need less administrators in our schools. We need to get taxpayers dollars to the students, not to grow bureaucracy.”
Yes, that should be "fewer" bureaucrats. But I have to say, his "solution" to this "problem" is very "creative." Walters has directed school districts to fully fund school lunches with their own money (which is somehow different from taxpayer money because reasons?) and if they can't submit a plan to do so, then "the OSDE will suggest cost-cutting measures and request that the budget be re-submitted." Because that will force them to cut spending on other stuff. And if the district is not compliant, Walters will cut off state funding (because that will really help solve the problem punish the disobedient). Also, he's going to implement a new rule to require "all meals/snacks served in Oklahoma’s schools are free of seed oils, artificial food dyes, ultra-processed foods, pesticide laden foods, and junk food vending machines to name a few." Because that kind of nanny state overreach is really bad when Michelle Obama tries to implement it, but totally okay when God-fearing MAGAbros do it. And there's even a petition to sig, because he's not trying to cut school funding-- he's trying to save the children. Come one! Think of the children!
But Walters already moved on to his next batshit crazy idea, which is to get PragerU to screen teachers coming from "woke" states so that none of their wokitude gets spread to Oklahoma's young humans.
If you are somehow unaware of Prager University (God bless you), it's a propaganda operation founded in 2009 by far right wingnut Dennis Prager and producer Allen Estrin. It is, if you can imagine such a thing, even less of an actual university than Trump University. They're a far right, low accuracy, christianist nationalist baloney farm that specializes in short, cute, full-of-baloney videos. PragerU is to education what McRibs are to pigs.
But Walters wants to make sure that anyone who tries to bring their teaching certificate from naughty states like New York or California (you know-- the wokey ones) aligns with Walter's commitment to an education "rooted in truth, patriotism and core values," and aimed to instill "pride" in the nation's history among students.
"We’re sending a clear message: Oklahoma’s schools will not be a haven for woke agendas pushed in places like California and New York," said Superintendent Ryan Walters. "If you want to teach here, you’d better know the Constitution, respect what makes America great, and understand basic biology. We’re raising a generation of patriots, not activists, and I’ll fight tooth and nail to keep leftist propaganda out of our classrooms." A PR release from the department said the test would evaluate teachers on, among other things, Constitutional knowledge, American exceptionalism, and "their grasp of fundamental biological differences between boys and girls."
"We’re thrilled to join Oklahoma in answering parents’ urgent call against senseless woke indoctrination," said PragerU CEO Marissa Streit. "This assessment will stop extreme leftist ideologues from harming children and ensure teachers champion America’s greatness and future potential."
News4, which has covered Walters shenanigans pretty thoroughly, submitted some questions to his office, such as was there a competitive bidding process for creating this test, how much will Prager be paid, and who will oversee this? They got no answers to those questions, nor to one of the best ones they asked--
Exactly what statute does Walters think gives him the authority for any of this?
Longtime Walters critic State Rep. Forrest Bennett (D-Oklahoma City) has pointed out that Oklahoma has a teacher shortage already and this is unlikely to help. And all of Walters actions in office happen against the backdrop of Oklahoma's almost-bottom-of-the-national-barrel rankings for education.
"It's a grift," says Bennett, who argues that treating all of Walters edicts as if they are legitimate and deserve to be taken seriously simply elevates them. Bennett points out that Walters notified Fox News before he notified the people of Oklahoma.
It's a fair point, but I think Walters deserves a little attention because he is the answer to the question, "How bad can these back-bench MAGA grifters get, and how badly can they screw things up on the state level?" Walters may not be able to, in the words of Captain Steven Hiller, "do all that bullshit you just said." But these various MAGAfied edicts can sow uncertainty and fear. They certainly aren't actual solutions to the real problems of education in Oklahoma, but they're a fine example of how a hustler can raise his profile by standing on the backs of children.
It’s hard to think of a decision that better encompasses this administration’s cruelty and wastefulness than this: After the richest man in the world shuttered the US agency that provides aid for the world’s poorest, the government is now going to spend money destroying the contraceptives, medications, and food items it chose not to distribute.
This includes $9.7 million in contraceptives that were bound for crisis areas — places like refugee camps and war zones. It includes $800,000 worth of high-energy biscuits, a kind of emergency food aid for people in the direst of circumstances — and enough of it to feed 1.5 million children for a week. To be clear, all of these items have already been paid for by US tax dollars. The Trump administration is about to spend more money to destroy them.
The cruelty and recklessness of dismantling USAID remains difficult for me to fathom. Researchers project that 14 million people will die who would have otherwise lived, including 4.5 million children. A study published in the Lancet found that in just 20 years, USAID saved some 90 million lives. As of the writing of this newsletter, one group estimates that axing PEPFAR alone — PEPFAR is the program that used to fund HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment worldwide — has already resulted in the deaths of 8,016 children and 75,305 adults.
Where is the “pro-life” movement? Where are the “compassionate conservatives” who helped to start PEPFAR in the first place?
There are a million reasons why this is foolish. USAID is important because any decent and moral person should understand that when one has much, one should give at least a little. America is the richest country to ever exist in the history of the world. We can save expectant mothers and hungry babies at negligible cost to the American taxpayer. That Elon Musk and Donald Trump, both men of extreme wealth (one to the point of obscenity), would see this as “waste” or America somehow being taken advantage of is a stunning admission of a soullessness and inhumanity that I think can only be explained by sociopathy.
But even if you don’t care about hungry children or people trying to survive wars or women who need care after being raped, you should still want to see USAID remain functional and ideally generous. USAID is one of the best tools we have to maintain America’s good standing in the world, and to make America a liked and respected country. That was already waning before Trump’s second round in the White House. I spent a few years living in Kenya and go back annually, and it’s very clear that China has made significant inroads in the country (quite literally by building roads). From the ground in East Africa, America seems to be receding, while China seems to be getting bigger and more important.
That matters for America’s future security, and so does the health and stability of developing countries. It is hard to be a stable nation while also being a sick and hungry nation. And unstable nations don’t typically leave that instability at their own borders.
Family planning tools are also key for national stability and wellbeing. Women who are able to access modern contraceptive methods are less likely to die in pregnancy, childbirth, or soon after; their children are less likely to die as infants; their families wind up wealthier. The children of women who were able to plan are more likely to complete their educations. On a much larger scale, higher levels of contraception use and the healthier women, children, and men that comes from better family planning results in greater national wealth. And that makes sense: A healthier, better-educated population generally means improvements in a country’s financial (and overall) wellbeing. Policy-makers know this. The DOGE boys probably could have googled it, or asked Grok:
According to MSI Reproductive Choices, a group that provides reproductive health care around the world, when they surveyed their own clinics, “nine out of 19 countries we surveyed reported they were already facing stockouts of at least one contraceptive method.” And now, the US government is about to destroy millions of dollars in contraceptives.
“MSI and partners have offered to pay for the shipment and distribution of the supplies, so they can reach the people who desperately need them,” the group said in a statement, “but our offer was rejected.”
Pretending Trump’s Actions Are Anything but What They Are Is Damaging
There is a lot of naive understanding of Trump. New York Times columnist Ezra Klein gave one expression of that recently, so I’ll use that as a starting point.
Years ago Ezra wrote primarily about economics and I valued that material and corresponded with him. In therecent piece at one point he was speculating about possibilities for understanding Trump. For instance maybe Trump has no plan. In the press, whether the topic is tariffs or Ukraine or reducing government, there has been a lot of speculation about what the plan is. Whenever this “what’s the plan” puzzlement is expressed by journalists or well-established policy wonks it makes me want to shout, “Of course there is no plan!” He has proven endlessly that most of the time he’s just saying whatever sounds good and he might figure out later how to follow up on it, or make a show of trying to, or just drop it if it’s no longer a useful topic to him.
A slight variation on this I’ve heard from other journalists is wondering, “gee, it’s hard to tell what the logic is in this action”. For instance what is the logic of giving a no-tax-on-tips break when the loss of Medicaid or food stamps will more than offset that. Again the temptation to shout. This time about how the intention is not to help average people but to cut as much help to them as possible so the money can be given to the top. That journalists either naively speculate about the logic of these actions, or think that by framing it as something to puzzle over they’re presenting it responsibly, is damaging. A spade needs to be called a spade. It brings to mind Dana Carvey’s Church Lady act where she would calmly wonder what was causing some evil to happen only to finally explode with, “Is it Satan!?” The point is not to equate Trump to Satan but rather the Church Lady’s need to shout out the obvious thing that too many are not saying.
Ezra later wondered whether Trump is just extremely distractible and simply can’t stick to a line of thought on a topic. Again the temptation to shout about how of course that’s true. It’s obvious from his meandering speech, his relentless changes of position, and his career. His career in particular shows his lack of plan. A mobile phone business was just started by the Trump company that would sell U.S. made phones when, oops, there’s no way to do that. He started a casino he couldn’t make into a sustained business. He did the same with his mail-order meat sales and his investment college and numerous other ventures.
One thing that I suspect is at least somewhat planned is the benefits to Trump from his “big beautiful bill” without regard to the likely damage to congressional Republicans. The bill gives him direct benefits as a high-income person and it will endear him to many of the rich and powerful he might want to do business with later. While he has in the past toyed with the idea of running for a third (unconstitutional) term he hasn’t mentioned that in quite a while. It appears at the end of his current term he’s done with elected office. If congressional Republicans suffer because of backlash to this bill what’s that to him? That they did what he asked without calculating his self-interest would follow a pattern of his. Getting people to do things for him and then letting them suffer when consequences fall on them. (Rudy Giuliani? Numerous people involved in fake elector schemes? Mike Pence?)
Maybe Ezra has long since concluded that Trump has no plan and is easily distracted and was just presenting these ideas as fresh and speculative for the sake of the interview, but that, “Gee, I wonder” approach to Trump is so common, and so damaging.
One thing that both Ezra and his guest, Kyla Scanlon, got wrong is an economic issue. See an upcoming piece about that.
ICE apparently has decided to take the law into its own hands, shoving aside Congress and the courts — and the Constitution.
In a huge escalation of scope, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has issued a new memo that will allow endless detention without hearings for due process or bond, according to an internal memo snagged by The Washington Post.
In a mass deportation campaign that is about to grow exponentially with new infusion of cash from the “big beautiful bill,” ICE and other Homeland Security immigration forces are also attacking the rules set by Constitution and courts for hearings before instant deportation.
Specifically, in a July 8 memo, Todd M. Lyons, acting ICE director says that undocumented migrants are no longer eligible for a bond hearing as they fight deportation proceedings in court. Immigrants lacking papers should be detained “for the duration of their removal proceedings,” which can take months or years.
Until now, migrants in the U.S. have had the right to request a bond hearing before an immigration judge. Lyons said new reviews by Homeland Security and Justice have determined that such immigrants “may not be released from ICE custody.” In rare exceptions immigrants may be released on parole, but that decision will be up to an immigration officer, not a judge, he wrote.
Values Questions and Practical Concerns
In practical terms, it means ICE masked agents who are grabbing migrants randomly at day labor spots, farms, workplaces, immigration courts or campuses now will looking to lock up manyfold more people — think millions — and sending them to private prisons in the U.S. or elsewhere with no legal checks. Gone is the facade of seeking those with criminal records. We’re entering an America that we will not recognize, if we are not there already.
The story of masked ICE agents seeking to question African, South American and Mexican teens playing baseball in a New York city park earlier this month being rebuffed by the team coach should send shivers down spines. Coach Youman Wilder told the agents the youths were American citizens and kept the agents at bay. Who are we becoming in the name of a citizens-only, immigrant-free nation that wants migrant labor sweat but offers no path to naturalization?
How dare ICE rewrite laws for immediate and endless detention? Is it more efficient for ICE to ignore the law? Maybe, but that doesn’t make it right, morally or legally. This is a guaranteed court challenge.
Since the memo emerged, the American Immigration Lawyers Association said members had reported that immigrants were being denied bond hearings in more than a dozen immigration courts across the country.
In its 2024 annual report, ICE said it detains immigrants only “when necessary” and that the vast majority of the 7.6 million people then on its docket were released pending immigration proceedings. Keeping them detained while their case is adjudicated has not been logistically possible — something that changed when Congress provided funds for detaining 100,000 migrants awaiting deportation in places like the new “alligator alley” Florida center. Immigrants are already subject to mandatory detention without bond if they have been convicted of murder or other serious crimes, though the threshold keeps dropping.
ICE is holding about 56,000 immigrants a day as officers sweep the nation for undocumented immigrants, working overtime to fulfill Trump’s goal of deporting one million in his first year.
When I was first worrying about public policy issues, back in the late 1970s, discussions of fertility rates often invoked the 1968 best-seller, The Population Bomb, written by Paul Ehrlich. At that time, the global population was about 3.5 billion–roughly half its current level. But the book warned that it was already too late, that population was on the brink of overwhelming food supply and the environment, and that there would be mass famine around the globe in the 1970s. Even by the late 1970s, it was clear that the more apocalyptic predictions of the book were hyperbolic. But there was a multi-year famine in the early 1970s in the Sahel region of Africa (basically, a band across the continent reaching from parts of Senegal and Mauritania in the west to Sudan and Eritrea in the east).
I run into a fair number of people who seem to believe that the forecasts of the Population Bomb were only premature, not incorrect. My own sense is that when you predict impending overpoplation leading to mass famine, but then it doesn’t arrive in the next half-century even as population doubles, the odds are good that your analysis has overlooked some key ingredients. The current global food problem involves issues of both too little and too much: that is, about 9% of the world population is undernourished, but 40% of the world population (many of them in lw-income countries) are obese.
Moreover, the current concern seems not to be focused on overpopulation, but on the consequences of low fertility. The June 2025 issue of Finance & Development, published by the IMF, has several articles of interest about declining fertility rates.
In 1950, the global total fertility rate was 5, meaning that the average woman in the world would have five children during her childbearing years, according to the United Nations Population Division. That was well above the 2.1 benchmark for long-term global population stability. Together with low and falling mortality, this drove global population to more than double over a half century, from 2.5 billion people in 1950 to 6.2 billion in 2000. A quarter of a century later, the world’s fertility rate stands at 2.24 and is projected to drop below 2.1 around 2050 (see Chart 1). This signals an eventual contraction of the world’s population, which the UN agency expects to top out at 10.3 billion in 2084. … Over the coming quarter century, 38 nations of more than 1 million people each will probably experience population declines, up from 21 in the past 25 years. Population loss in the coming quarter century will be largest in China with a drop of 155.8 million, Japan with 18 million, Russia with 7.9 million, Italy with 7.3 million, Ukraine with 7 million, and South Korea with 6.5 million …
For those concerned about overpopulation, this news must be concerning in the short run (global population will rise for the next few decades), but perhaps reassuring about the longer run (global population eventually set to decline.
Economists, of course, are proverbial for their every-rose-has-its-thorns mindset–that is, seeing the potential downside in all news. In that spirit, there are obvious concerns over lower fertility. For government finances, a much larger proportion of citizens will be elderly, thus relying on government pension and and health insurance benefits. Economic growth may slow down as well, with a greater share of the population either retired from working and/or starting new businesses.
There is occasional discussion of public policies to encourage families to have more children, but at least so far, countries that have adopted such policies have barely moved the needle of the overall fertility trends. My own sense is that the biggest pro-family policies include affordable family-style housing, high-quality schools and affordable higher-education, and a broader sense that of progress and economic growth.
Other articles in the same issue focus on a different adjustment: can people live longer in a healthy way, and perhaps also plan to work longer before retirement?
Andrew Scott and Peter Piot discuss “The Longevity Dividend,” by which they mean the ability of the healthy elderly to work more years. As they write: “The current health system is at risk of keeping us alive but not healthier for longer, at an ever-increasing cost to individuals, families, and society. In short, in the 20th century, we added years to life. In the 21st, we must add life to these extra years. This requires a shift toward chronic disease prevention and health maintenance, not just treating people when they become ill.”
They describe a social and policy focus on what it would mean to have a society where the expectation for many people was that they would be in good health into their 80s. From an employment view, they add: “But good health alone is not enough to keep people engaged in employment for longer. We also need the kinds of age-friendly jobs older people prefer—with more flexible hours, fewer physical demands, and greater autonomy. By reducing the competition between younger and older workers, such jobs limit the career impact on the former.”
Similarly, Bertrand Gruss and Diaa Noreldin describe “Sustaining Growth in an Aging World.” They point out that people are remaining healthy later into life:
Data on individuals from 41 advanced and emerging market economies reveal that the recent cohorts of older people—those 50 and older—have better physical and cognitive capacities than earlier cohorts of the same age. When it comes to cognitive capacities, the 70s are indeed the new 50s: A person who was 70 in 2022 had the same cognitive health score as a 53-year-old in 2000. Older workers’ physical health—such as grip strength and lung capacity—has also improved. Better health means better labor market outcomes. Over a decade, the cumulative improvement in cognitive capacities experienced by someone aged 50 or over is associated with an increase of about 20 percentage points in the likelihood of remaining in the labor force. It’s also associated with an additional six hours worked per week and a 30 percent increase in earnings. All this could mitigate aging’s drag on growth.
It feels to me as if many people haven’t yet internalized what it means to have a reasonable expectation of living not only longer, but also healthier. I hear from (and about) people who just see it as a chance for a longer and more active retirement. But at least some older people could be enticed by more flexible labor market arrangements to keep a foot (or even just few toes) in the labor market for longer. I suspect that both they as individuals and society as a whole would benefit from that happening.
Back during the Great Recession of 2007-09, it became common for economists to talk about “financial plumbing” as part of the problem. The metaphor of pipes and drains and valves was meant to suggest that a relatively small blockage or capacity limitation in one part of the financial plumbing could lead to much bigger systemic effects. In other words, the financial plumbing might work just fine in ordinary day-to-day use, but if one part of the financial system came under stress, problems could back up unexpectedly.
With that general concept in mind, consider the total amount of US Treasury debt held by the public. Back in 2001, it was about $3.5 trillion. By 2009, it had doubled again to $7 trillion. By 2016, it had doubled again to $14 trillion. By 2024, it had doubled one more time to $28 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office forecasts suggest that by 2035, based on current law (that is, before the passage of this year’s budget and tax bills, which in their current form would increase the debt further), total US debt could nearly double one more time to $52 trillion.
So here’s the question: How confident should we be that the financial plumbing which handled the trading of US Treasury debt when the market was one-eighth of its current size, back in 2001, is equally capable of handling the much larger volume–especially when the market comes under stress? Darrell Duffie rings some warning bells in “How US Treasuries Can Remain the World’s Safe Haven” (Journal of Economic Perspectives, Spring 2025). (Full disclosure: I am the Managing Editor of JEP, and thus predisposed to find the articles of interest.)
If it seems far-fetched that the US Treasury market should come under stress, then it’s worth noting that it happened in March 2020. Duffie explains:
When the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic on March 12, 2020, … the dealers who make markets for Treasuries were unable to handle the flood of demands by investors around the world to buy their Treasury securities. Bond dealers were asked at the same time to buy enormous quantities of mortgage- backed securities and corporate bonds, among other demands for liquidity. Total customer-to-dealer bond-market trade volumes suddenly jumped to over ten times their respective 2017–2022 sample medians (Duffie et al. 2023). The bond market reached the limits of its intermediation capacity and became effectively dysfunctional. Yields for Treasury securities lurched higher, while dealer-to-customer bid-offer spreads and dealer-to-dealer market depth worsened by factors of over ten (Duffie 2020). Among other steps to support the market, the Federal Reserve purchased almost $1 trillion dollars of Treasury securities from primary dealers in the first three weeks after March 12, freeing dealer balance-sheet space to handle more sales from customers. Weak market functionality persisted for several additional weeks (Duffie et al. 2023). Although liquidity in Treasury markets gradually returned to normal, many Treasuries investors presumably noticed that in the heart of the March 2020 crisis, they had not benefited from the safe-haven requirement of a liquid and deep market. Even before the COVID-19 crisis, the vaunted liquidity of the market for trading Treasuries had been showing cracks under stress.
Potential difficulties in the market for US Treasury bonds have large implications. As Duffie notes, many financial institutions and investors around the world view US Treasuries as their “safe” asset. Pretty much by definition, a safe asset holds its value and can be sold when desired. The ability of the US government to market its debt at favorable interest rates depends on this widespread perception. But if the market for Treasury debt can become illiquid in a crisis, as happened in March 2020, then Treasury debt is less safe than it previously appeared. The higher risk means that the US government would need to pay higher interest rates when it borrows.
As Duffie explains the plumbing in the market for Treasury debt, about $1 trillion is traded every day, and most of that flows through 25 firms that are designated as “primary dealers.” Essentially, this means that when there is a surge of sellers of Treasury debt, these primary dealers need to be financially able to act as immediate buyers–although of course they will be planning to re-sell most of that Treasury debt later. But the total amount of Treasury debt is rising fast, much faster than the financial size of the primary dealers. In 2007, before the Great Recession, the ratio of total Treasury debt to the assets of the primary dealers was less than 0.2; by 2023, the ratio was above 0.7. In short, the financial plumbing for the US Treasury market is running much closer to its capacity, and it has already gotten clogged once.
Of course, one way to make it easier for the primary dealers to guarantee that they will buy Treasury debt when needed would be to have less government borrowing and less Treasury debt. Now that we’ve all had a good giggle over the implausibility of that happening, what are the serious options? Ultimately, the goal might be to move beyond having the Treasury debt market flow through these 25 firms, and instead create an “all-to-all” market, more like the stock market, where buyers and sellers of Treasury debt can interact directly. But setting up such a market is nontrivial, and it still would raise the question of what happens in world financial markets if a wave of sellers of Treasury debt start driving down the price.
Duffie reviews a number of policy options, some of which are being implemented. You can read his article for details, but to give a sense of the possibilities:
Require that trades for Treasury debt be carried out through a central clearinghouse, rather than as trades between two separate parties: “The clearinghouse offers a guarantee: if one of the original counterparties fails to perform at settlement, then the clearinghouse will complete the settlement.”
“Regulators are slowly moving toward a plan for improving post-trade price transparency in the market for US Treasury securities by publishing trade price and quantities shortly after each trade (Liang 2022). Post-trade price transparency will likely improve competition and allocative efficiency. … The efficiency with which dealers are matched to trades will improve, likely expanding the intermediation capacity of the market. Eventually, greater post-trade price transparency will also speed up the emergence of all- to-all trade.”
The Federal Reserve could set up arrangements to guarantee in advance that if/when US Treasury debt markets are melting down, they will extend short-term credit to key market players as needed. Experience has taught that when such backstop arrangements are known to be available in advance, they are less likely to become necessary!
The US Treasury could buy back US Treasury debt issued in the distant past, which is harder to trade in the market, and replace it with newly-issued debt which is easier to trade in the market.
Re-consider the specific bank supervision rules that try to make sure banks have sufficient capital to face crises, and make sure that these rules are not having the effect of discouraging banks from holding Treasury debt in a financial crisis situation.
Duffie says it bluntly: “The market for Treasury securities is simply growing too large to rely exclusively on dealers to intermediate investor trades.” Ultimately, the choice is whether financial regulators will proceed with all deliberate speed to implement the necessary changes before the next crisis hits the Treasury debt market, or whether the regulators will be improvising less-considered schemes when the next crisis hits the Treasury debt market.
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