mandate

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma’s new public schools superintendent announced Wednesday he is rescinding a mandate from his predecessor that forced schools to incorporate the Bible into lesson plans for students.

Superintendent Lindel Fields said in a statement he has “no plans to distribute Bibles or a Biblical character education curriculum in classrooms.” The directive last year from former Superintendent Ryan Walters drew immediate condemnation from civil rights groups and prompted a lawsuit from a group of parents, teachers and religious leaders that is pending before the Oklahoma Supreme Court. It was to have applied to students in grades 5 through 12.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt appointed Fields to the superintendent’s post after Walters resigned last month to take a job in the private sector.

Jacki Phelps, an attorney for the Oklahoma State Department of Education, said she intends to notify the court of the agency’s plan to rescind the mandate and seek a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

Many schools districts across the state had decided not to comply with the Bible mandate.

A spokeswoman for the state education department, Tara Thompson, said Fields believes the decision on whether the Bible should be incorporated into classroom instruction is one best left up to individual districts and that spending money on Bibles is not the best use of taxpayer resources.

Walters in March had announced plans to team up with country music singer Lee Greenwood seeking donations to get Bibles into classrooms after a legislative panel rejected his $3 million request to fund the effort. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit challenging the Bible mandate did not immediately comment.

Walters, a far-right Republican, made fighting “woke ideology”, banning certain books from school libraries and getting rid of “radical leftists” who he claims were indoctrinating children in classrooms a focal point of his administration. Since his election in 2020, he imposed a number of mandates on public schools and worked to develop new social studies standards for K-12 public school students that included teaching about conspiracy theories related to the 2020 presidential election. Those standards have been put on hold while a lawsuit challenging them moves forward.

Thompson said the agency plans to review all of Walters’ mandates, including a requirement that applicants from teacher jobs coming from California and New York take an ideology exam, to determine if those may also be rescinded.

“We need to review all of those mandates and provide clarity to schools moving forward,” she said.

Murphy writes for the Associated Press.

Maybe you can call Canada and Tesla (TSLA 3.94%) frenemies. The tension between the two entities has existed since Tesla allegedly manipulated Canada’s electric vehicle (EV) subsidy program. While Tesla believes it to be a misunderstanding and was later cleared of wrongdoing, it added to the political tension between the two nations, and added to the Canadian resentment toward Tesla CEO Elon Musk for then supporting the Trump administration.

It was a little messy, so it’s even more entertaining now that Canada might actually put more dollars in the pockets of Tesla. Here’s the situation.

What’s going on

Canadian automakers have been raising red flags and could be in for a bumpy ride if Canada’s electric vehicle (EV) mandate is enforced as currently described and EV sales don’t accelerate. Essentially, Canada’s EV sales mandate requires an automaker to ensure a certain percentage of new cars, SUVs, and light-duty trucks sold are zero-emission vehicles including hybrids.

Originally the mandate was supposed to start at 20% in 2026, but now it will begin in 2027 with the caveat that the initial target will be a challenging 27%. The percentage will rise steadily every year until 2035 when all new vehicle sales are intended to be EVs. For context, EV sales in Canada nearly reached 15% of total sales in 2024, but that was when the government was offering consumer rebates up to $5,000.

Once funding ran dry for the rebate in January, sales took a mighty plunge. The most recent data from Statistics Canada shows EV sales generated 7.7% of all new vehicle sales in July — a far cry from what’s going to be required to meet standards on average.

Image source: Tesla.

What are Canadian autos to do?

As most investors following the industry know, there’s a way to comply with these mandates by purchasing zero-emission credits from companies that have a surplus. Companies such as Tesla that only sell EVs and have no gasoline vehicle sales to offset, can simply sell their credits to needy gasoline-heavy automakers and pocket the money — it’s great business for pure EV makers. Zero-emission credit sales were instrumental during Tesla’s early years and still have been a major contributor to its financials.

The good news for Tesla is that Canadian automakers may not have an option other than to begrudgingly purchase from Tesla despite the ruffled feathers between the two entities. According to Canadian Vehicle Manufacturers’ Association president Brian Kingston, with 2026 models already being purchased, Tesla would be one — if not the only — automaker with a surplus of credits on hand to sell to other companies.

It also gets a little more complicated because as the targets become more challenging there will be more demand and less supply of these credits available, forcing some automakers to buy them ahead of time to be utilized when necessary. According to Kingston, estimates show over $1 billion has already been committed to this and could cost the Canadian industry more than $3 billion by 2030.

What it all means

Zero-emission credits have been a huge business for Tesla, and the company has generated billions and billions of dollars over the years selling them to needy automakers. Unfortunately for Tesla and other EV makers, changing policy in the U.S. has erased the need for these credits in the states.

In fact, Tesla was estimated to generate $3 billion from credit revenue in 2025 alone before the policy change knocked that estimate down by 40%. Tesla’s credit revenue is expected to plunge even further next year to $595 million before becoming irrelevant in 2027.

For investors, an extremely valuable Tesla revenue stream is about to dry up, unless Canada’s mandate stays as written. While it wouldn’t generate near the revenue the U.S. credit situation has, it would still be a welcome development as credit revenue in the U.S. fades rapidly — and Tesla could sure use a small win right now.