Oklahoma
Oklahoma banned trans students from bathrooms. Now a bullied student is dead
Whenever Oklahoma teenager Nex Benedict was bullied at school for being transgender, their mother Sue Benedict would encourage the 16-year-old to rise above their tormentors.
“I said ‘you’ve got to be strong and look the other way, because these people don’t know who you are’,” Ms Benedict told The Independent in a phone interview.
“I didn’t know how bad it had gotten.”
The bullying had started in earnest at the beginning of the 2023 school year, a few months after Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt signed a bill that required public school students to use bathrooms that matched the sex listed on their birth certificates.
A few weeks ago, on 7 February, the bullying allegedly erupted in violence when Nex suffered severe head injuries during a “physical altercation” at Owasso High School, according to the Owasso Police Department.
Sue Benedict told The Independent she was called to the school that day to find Nex badly beaten with bruises over their face and eyes, and with scratches on the back of their head.
Nex told her that they and another transgender student at Owasso High School had been in a fight with three older girls in a girls bathroom. Nex was knocked to the ground during the fight and hit their head on the floor, according to their mother.
Nex Benedict had been bullied for at least a year at Owasso High School in Oklahoma, their mother says
(Courtesy of Benedict family)
Ms Benedict said she was furious that the school had failed to call an ambulance or the police. She said the school then informed her Nex was being suspended for two weeks.
She took Nex to the Bailey Medical Center in Owasso for treatment. They spoke to a police school resource officer at the medical facility and were discharged.
That night, Nex went to bed with a sore head and eventually fell asleep while listening to music, Ms Benedict said.
On 8 February, Nex was getting ready to go to Tulsa with Ms Benedict for an appointment when they collapsed in the family living room.
Ms Benedict called an ambulance, and EMT officers arrived to find Nex had stopped breathing. Nex was declared dead that evening in hospital.
In a statement, the Owasso Police Department said they were “conducting a very active and thorough investigation of the time and events that led up to the death of the student”.
Owasso PD spokesperson Nick Boatman told The Independent that police were awaiting the results of toxicology and autopsy reports from the Oklahoma Medical Examiner’s Office before determining whether anyone will be charged.
Mr Boatman said “all charges will be on the table” once a cause of death was confirmed.
An Owasso Public Schools spokesperson declined to provide information about the assault or the school’s response when contacted by The Independent, citing the active police investigation.
Anti-trans social media influencer Chaya Raichik, who runs the Libs of TikTok, frequently posts inflammatory videos, LGBTQ advocates say (Getty Images for Bentkey Venture)
LGBTQ advocacy groups have described Nex’s death as a “hate crime”, and linked it to the “hateful rhetoric spewed by leaders in our state” and the Libs of TikTok account run by far-right social media influencer Chaya Raichik.
Ms Raichik, a New York-based former real estate agent, became a cause celebre among conservatives for using her Libs of TikTok account to post edited, anti-trans videos that target public school teachers and librarians.
An Owasso High School teacher who Nex had greatly admired resigned in 2022 after they were featured in one of Ms Raichik’s posts.
Ms Raichik did not respond to a request for comment by The Independent. On X, she denied any link to the death and said she was unjustly being blamed for a murder.
‘When you’re old school, you don’t always understand it’
Like many parents, Sue Benedict and her husband Walter at times struggled to understand the nuances of Nex’s gender fluidity.
Ms Benedict is Nex’s biological grandmother, and raised them since they were two months old along with her five other children. She formally adopted Nex a few years ago.
She told The Independent that Nex was always understanding if she used an incorrect pronoun, or called Nex by their birth name.
“Nex did not see themselves as male or female,” Ms Benedict said. “Nex saw themselves right down the middle. I was still learning about it, Nex was teaching me that.”
“When you’re old school, you don’t always understand it,” her husband Walter told The Independent.
“But it would be very boring if we were all the same. It’s on the inside that matters the most.”
Nex Benedict with their cat Zeus. The straight-A student was ‘going places’, their mother said
(Courtesy of Benedict family)
The family, who trace part of their roots to the Cherokee Nation, encouraged open discussions about questions of gender and identity.
“I was very open with my children to be who and what they thought was best,” Ms Benedict said.
“They could talk to me about anything, as long as that respect goes both ways. A child needs to figure out who they are and what they want to be, and you cannot force it upon them.”
Nex’s sister Malia Pila, who is also a member of the LGBTQ community, told The Independent in an interview that Nex’s fluid gender identity “was not an issue nor anything that anybody cared about” within the family.
Nex was a straight-A student who enjoyed drawing, reading, playing video games Ark and Minecraft, and was devoted to their cat Zeus, Ms Benedict said.
“I was so proud of Nex. They were going some place, they were so free,” she said.
In April 2022, Owasso High School teacher Tyler Wrynn was featured in a surreptitiously filmed Libs of TikTok post telling students: “If your parents don’t accept you for who you are, f*** them.”
Former Owasso student reacts to Nex Benedict’s death
The incident sparked a backlash in the small Oklahoma city of 40,000 residents, and Mr Wrynn resigned from the Owasso Public Schools system.
“Nex was very angry about it,” Ms Benedict said. Ms Benedict said that teachers who encourage debate about gender issues were not promoting sexualised content.
“They’re allowing the students to be who they are.”
Ms Benedict said she first became aware that Nex was being bullied at school in early 2023.
“They’d go straight to their room and put it on their radio, and I’d say ‘OK you gotta decompress for a little bit, and then come out and talk about it’.”
Ms Benedict said she remains furious at the school for failing to call police or seek medical attention for Nex, and wants to see the children who allegedly assaulted Nex punished.
“So many people push kids to be one thing, and you’ve got to let them find themselves and be who they should be,” Ms Benedict said.
“Society has got to see them as they are. Accept them and go on, because we are all people.”
‘Woke ideology’
Last August, a Libs of TikTok post showing an edited video critical of a public school librarian in Tulsa led to several consecutive days of bomb threats to schools in the district.
Ms Raichik’s anti-LGBTQ posts have been linked to nearly three dozen threats made towards schools, libraries, hospitals and businesses across 16 states, according to a recent NBC News investigation.
Last month, Oklahoma’s Republican superintendent of public schools Ryan Walters appointed Ms Raichik to the state’s library advisory committee.
Mr Walters has not commented publicly on Nex’s death. He put out a video on X on President’s Day, decrying “radical woke college professors” for placing Donald Trump at the bottom of a list of the United States’ greatest presidents.
“We judge presidents by outcomes not woke ideology,” he said
Freedom Oklahoma, an LGBTQ advocacy group, blamed Oklahoman lawmakers and Ms Raichik for promoting bigotry and intolerance towards trans students after Nex’s death.
The group said that Ms Raichik “continues to use her platform in a way that leads others to threaten real harm at Oklahoma kids”.
“We want to be clear, whether Nex died as a direct result of injuries sustained in the brutal hate-motivated attack at school or not, Nex’s death is a result of being the target of physical and emotional harm because of who Nex was,” the group wrote.
‘Nex had a light in them that was so big’
Since Nex’s death, Ms Benedict said she had barely slept and been “walking in a blur”.
When it came time to place an obituary, Ms Benedict said she had provided Nex’s birth name by accident. This has led to some media coverage of Nex’s death using their birth name, or dead name.
“When you are going through something like this and you lose a child, you’re not thinking right. We’re getting a headstone done and Nex will be on there,” she said.
Nex’s funeral was held at the Mowery Funeral Service on 15 February. After the service, police officers from Owasso and the neighbouring city of Collinsville accompanied members of the local chapter of Bikers Against Child Abuse as they provided an escort from the service to the graveside.
A GoFundme page set up to help with funeral costs has raised $28,000 and Ms Benedict said she plans to donate most of the money to LGBTQ anti-bullying organisations.
“Nex had a light in them that was so big, they had so many dreams. I want their light to keep shining for everyone. That light was so big and bright and beautiful, and I want everyone to remember Nex that way.”
Their end is inevitable, but the Los Angeles Lakers (0-3) can stave off elimination when they host the Oklahoma City Thunder for Game 4 of the 2026 Western Conference Semifinals.
At BetMGM, Oklahoma City opened as -500 on the moneyline (Los Angeles at +375) and -10.5 favorites. However, the flood of pro-Thunder money has steamed them up to -11.5 favorites at the time of writing.
THE REFS IN THE OKC-LA SERIES WERE SO BAD, THE LAKERS HAD TO HAVE A POSTGAME MEETING WITH THEM
Oklahoma City Thunder’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander gets a layup vs. the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 2 of the 2026 Western Conference Semifinals at Paycom Center. (Alonzo Adams-Imagn Images)
OKC has won every game this series by 18+ points and has a seven-game winning streak over LA. That’s despite reigning NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander not putting up his typical crazy numbers.
Shai is scoring only 21.0 points per game in this series, slightly behind Thunder big man Chet Holmgren’s 21.3 PPG average, which leads the team.
LeBron James Is Trying To Avoid Another Sweep
LeBron James has only been swept three times in his career: the 2007 NBA Finals by the San Antonio Spurs, the 2018 NBA Finals by the Golden State Warriors and the 2023 Western Conference Finals by the Denver Nuggets.
FLOPPING IS RUINING THE NBA AND LEBRON SHOULD TAKE SOME BLAME FOR THAT
Maybe the sweep is a foregone conclusion, like the New York Knicks vs. Philadelphia 76ers series, but I’m counting on the Lakers dying on their sword and going out with honor.
Los Angeles Lakers All-Star LeBron James shoots over the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 3 of the second round of the 2026 NBA Playoffs at Crypto.com Arena. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images)
Los Angeles held a first-half lead in Games 2 and 3 and still lost by 18 and 23 points, respectively. Granted, perhaps that’s just OKC playing with its food more than anything the Lakers are doing right.
Still, it’s something for L.A. to build on.
Lakers Need Oklahoma City’s Role Players To Cool Off
The Lakers are hitting 39.3% of their 3-pointers in this series. Unfortunately for them, the Thunder are shooting 42.3% from behind the arc.
But Oklahoma City’s role players are doing most of the damage from deep. Thunder guards Jared McCain, Cason Wallace and Isaiah Joe, along with big man Jaylin Williams, are a combined 25 for 41 from 3-point range, good for a ridiculous 61.0%.
The Oklahoma City Thunder bench reacts after making a 3-pointer vs. the Los Angeles Lakers in the second round of the 2026 NBA Playoffs at Crypto.com Arena. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images)
That’s not sustainable.
If these randoms hit fewer shots in Game 4, the Lakers can cover the spread.
Betting Market Is Overwhelmingly On OKC
Finally, 95% of the money at BetMGM is on Oklahoma City as of Monday morning, according to John Ewing.
While I’m not someone who bows at the altar of betting splits, 95% of people don’t beat the sportsbooks. We all know this.
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I know that’s simple logic, but if you blindly fade teams this popular in the betting market, you’ll probably have a positive return on investment.
Best Bet: Los Angeles Lakers +11.5
_____________________________
Follow me on X @Geoffery-Clark, and check out my OutKick Bets Podcast for more betting content and random rants.
Oklahoma
Tulsa Race Massacre reparations is soul-redeeming work for the US, Oklahoma civil rights lawyer says
NEW YORK (AP) — It wasn’t until his junior year of college that civil rights attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons learned about a devastating massacre that took place in his hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
His African American studies professor lectured about what is known today as the Tulsa Race Massacre — the days in 1921 when white mobs carried out a scorched-earth campaign against an outnumbered Black militia protecting the fabled Black Wall Street, a prosperous all-Black community.
“I actually told a teacher, ‘I’m from Tulsa. That’s not true,’” Solomon-Simmons recalled. “And of course, I was wrong.”
That day planted a seed for the then-aspiring attorney, who went on to lead a reparations campaign for the living survivors of the massacre and their descendants. Nearly 105 years later, no one has been compensated for what they lost, and none of the culprits have been held accountable.
That fight for reparations is the subject of Solomon-Simmons’ first book, “Redeem a Nation: The Century-Long Battle to Restore the Soul of America,” which is intended as a blueprint for justice in historic atrocities that Black Americans endured but never received reparations for. The book hits shelves Tuesday.
After the massacre, more than 35 city blocks of the neighborhood known as Greenwood were leveled in fires, an estimated 191 businesses were destroyed, and roughly 11,000 Black residents were displaced. The state of Oklahoma declared the death toll to be only 36 people, although many historians and experts who have studied the event put the death toll between 75 and 300.
Greenwood, founded in 1906, had been a bustling city within a city, with Black-owned grocery stores, soda fountains, cafés, barbershops, a movie theater, music venues, cigar and billiard parlors, tailors and dry cleaners, rooming houses and rental properties.
“If you can ignore Greenwood, which was the beacon of Black prosperity and Black progress in the history of this country, then you can ignore Black people in general,” Solomon-Simmons recently told The Associated Press. “I think that’s why people around the nation are so focused on the work that we’re doing, because they understand what it means to all of Black America.”
Solomon-Simmons’s book comes just months before the United States will mark 250 years since its founding in 1776. That was 89 years before the institution of chattel slavery — meaning an enslaved person was held as legal property of another — was abolished. The civil rights attorney questions the idea that Americans can truly celebrate the country’s accomplishments when it has yet to pay reparations, which historians say informs modern day disparities in wealth between Black and white people.
“We cannot talk about what America has been and will be, without making sure that these issues are discussed and we get reparatory justice for both” slavery and the Tulsa massacre, Solomon-Simmons said.
‘America has never had a soul’
In 343 pages, Solomon-Simmons does more than recite the history of the massacre or make a legal thriller out of his reparations campaign. For him, securing justice for the survivors and descendants of the massacre is also about healing a nation whose earliest promises of equality for all rang hollow.
“When I speak of repairing America’s soul, I do not mean restoring something that was once whole,” Solomon-Simmons writes in the book. “America has never had a soul. … There was no moral center to recover.”
He suggests that America’s soul cannot be repaired if it is forced to choose between rebuilding the nation or repairing Black America. They must do both, he says.
“The struggle for justice in Greenwood is not about returning to a mythical past. It is about proving whether America can build a soul at all through truth, through justice, through repair.”
Reparations for slavery and other historical racial injustices has been debated in the U.S. since Reconstruction, through the Civil Rights Movement and for much of the 21st century. Jennifer L. Morgan, a professor of history at New York University, said such debates are complicated by the question of exactly who pays the reparations and exactly who receives the payment.
“I don’t think that we’re talking about individuals who owe anybody else reparations. I think we’re talking about states, about institutions, about the nation,” Morgan said. “America is still grappling with reparations because America is still grappling at the legacy of slavery, racial discrimination, Jim Crow, and violent exclusion of Black people from the body politic.”
Some opponents of reparations argue there are no living culprits or direct victims of enslavement, much less people with verifiable claims of harm that can be presented in a court of law.
Solomon-Simmons disagrees.
“We know who did the massacre — the perpetrators are still living in Tulsa,” he said referring to the city and the chamber of commerce, which plaintiffs alleged had a hand in obstructing Greenwood’s recovery.
There is one remaining massacre survivor involved in the reparations lawsuit: 111-year-old Lessie Benningfield Randle.
“If we cannot get her reparations while she’s alive, for the massacre, it’s gonna make it that much harder for us to get reparations for enslavement, Jim Crow, redlining and all those things that we are owed,” Solomon-Simmons said.
Fight for Tulsa reparations continues
In the book, Solomon-Simmons reflects on what committed him to the reparations fight.
While in law school, he was introduced to high profile civil rights attorneys working for the Reparations Coordinating Committee – the late Harvard Professor Charles Ogletree Jr., who mentored Barack and Michelle Obama; and the late Johnnie Cochran, who is widely known for defending O.J. Simpson during his trial for murder of his ex-wife. Solomon-Simmons became a law clerk for the committee.
After witnessing Ogletree argue a Tulsa reparations case in federal court in 2004, Solomon-Simmons said the practice of law stopped being just a credential for speaking, writing, or teaching. It became a calling.
In 2020, Solomon-Simmons led a lawsuit on behalf of 11 plaintiffs, including the last three known living survivors of the massacre, against the City of Tulsa and seven defendants. The suit was the first of its kind in state court and the first to get far enough to see a judge. In 2024, the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit. In the final days of the Biden administration, the Justice Department released a report saying it had determined there is no longer an avenue for criminal prosecution over the massacre.
But the fight continues, Solomon-Simmons says, for cash payment to Randle and other descendants, as well as the return of land stolen after the massacre and during a period of urban renewal in Tulsa.
In 2025, the city’s first Black mayor, Monroe Nichols, endorsed a broad proposal dubbed Project Greenwood, which calls for financially compensating Randle, funding a scholarship program for descendants of victims, and designating June 1 as Tulsa Race Massacre Observance Day.
Solomon-Simmons also runs the nonprofit Justice for Greenwood, which he founded a year before the community marked the centennial of the massacre in 2021.
“One thing I’ve learned from this work, and as a lawyer in general, is that people want justice,” he said. “People want reparations, but people (also) want acknowledgment. They want to be seen. They want people to understand that something happened to them and their family, and they want an apology.”
___
Aaron Morrison is the race and ethnicity news editor at AP.
Earlier this year, Sooners On SI broke down Oklahoma’s opponents in 2026. With spring football in the rearview window, how do the Sooners’ foes look heading into the summer following their March/April practices? We continue with the Ole MIss Rebels.
As Oklahoma journeys deeper into November, the talent level keeps rising.
While Oklahoma worked to secure a pivotal player’s return for one final season, Ole Miss had already pulled off one of the offseason’s most impactful moves — locking in an extra year of eligibility for quarterback Trinidad Chambliss.
Exit Lane Kiffin, enter Pete Golding. Well, that already happened before the College Football Playoff, but now the country waits to see if Golding will be able to continue his impressive run as a head coach into an offseason.
How did spring treat the Rebels? Even if Ole Miss appears strong on paper. OU does get the benefit of hosting the Rebels for a second straight season once November arrives.
The Injury Front
Good news and bad news for Ole Miss during spring ball: The good is that no players will be dealing with injuries deep into the summer.
The bad news was that an “injury bug” plagued the offensive line, causing the defensive-minded coach to scale back on full-contact drills and practice during the spring to avoid further injury.
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While injuries weren’t a large concern for Ole Miss this spring, they have to deal with replacing top-end talent — mostly on defense. Talents like edge rusher Princewill Umanmielen, who transferred to LSU to follow Kiffin.
Ole Miss Strength
Chambliss ranks among the best quarterbacks in the country, and the way he rises to the occasion in Ole Miss’ biggest games makes the Rebels dangerous every time he takes the field.
Even without Kiffin, Ole Miss was busy during the transfer portal in trying to replenish a great deal of skill talent that either exited the program or graduated.
Post-Spring Oklahoma Opponent Breakdowns
With Kewan Lacy in the backfield and tight ends Dae’Quan Wright and Luke Hasz, the Rebels’ offense will no doubt be one of the tougher units Oklahoma will face.
If Golding is able to maintain his impressive control of the program he showcased during last season’s College Football Playoff, the offense should still be one of the best in the country.
The Final Verdict
Ole Miss has had Oklahoma’s number in the Sooners’ first two years in the SEC. Could a fortitous schedule factor — a second game in Norman in back-to-back years — finally get Oklahoma over the Rebels?
No matter the feelings prior to the game, Ole Miss may be one of the tougher games on the schedule for OU — including the first six-week crucible. Chambliss has proven to be that good, and despite the defensive departures, Ole Miss has proven to reload talent quickly.
Depending on Oklahoma’s record at the time of the game, their match with the Rebels could prove to pivotal for either team’s playoff chances. Last season for OU, this was the road game against Alabama.
OU will have the talent to combat Ole Miss, but the Rebels will have a sure-fire Heisman contender under center.
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