Watchdog Report Reveals Teacher Unions Have Contributed a Fortune to Left Wing Causes
“Show me your budget and I will show you what you value; and what the teachers unions value is political power and advancing a left wing, social justice agenda.”
A new report from watchdog group Defending Education has revealed that teacher unions have donated massive sums of money to far-left groups and causes that have nothing to do with educating the nation’s children.
This is one of the reasons that schools are failing our kids. These unions care more about Planned Parenthood and protesting Republicans than they do about teaching children how to read and do math.
FOX News reports:
Watchdog report exposes teachers union ‘political machine’ funneling more than $1 billion to liberal causes
A new pair of reports is shedding fresh light on how teachers unions across the country have quietly poured more than $1 billion into political causes over the past decade, with a top education watchdog warning the spending reflects a growing focus on activism rather than classroom priorities.
According to research from Defending Education, national teachers unions alone have directed roughly $669 million toward left-wing political groups, advocacy organizations and campaigns since 2015. When state and local affiliates are included, that figure balloons to more than $1 billion in total political spending.
The reports track spending from the two largest unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), as well as their state-level affiliates, using federal filings and campaign finance records.
“These entities are a political machine,” Rhyen Staley, research director at Defending Education, told Fox News Digital.
“Show me your budget and I will show you what you value; and what the teachers unions value is political power and advancing a left wing, social justice agenda. Parents, families, and communities have little to no counter to the influence that teachers union dollars have on state and local campaigns. Gone are the days of unions just advocating for higher wages, better working conditions, and good health insurance; they are a political machine focused on fomenting a ‘political revolution.’”
The Center Square notes that the report includes this tidbit about protests:
Report: Teacher’s union gives nearly 2M to org that trains for May Day protests
An education group has uncovered that teacher’s union the National Education Association has given nearly two million dollars in donations since 2020 to an organization that trains for May Day school “walk-in” protests, as well as demands agendas such as “tax the rich” and the removal of ICE.
Defending Education – the organization that released the report – director of research Rhyen Staley told The Center Square that “teachers unions turning children into far-left political pawns is a betrayal of the public trust.”
“Gone are the days of these public sector unions simply fighting for better wages, insurance, and working conditions,” Staley said. “They are leftwing political activist organizations who benefit fiscally from taxpayer dollars.”
Staley made the point that “roughly 70% of American students are not proficient in reading and math, yet the teachers unions are using their influence and positions of power and authority to train children to protest and agitate for far-left causes.”
“This reinforces that the unions’ priorities are about advancing a radical political agenda, not the education of America’s children,” Staley said.
This is simply no longer about education. It is very plainly about left-wing indoctrination.
I don’t pretend to know how to fix this, but it cannot continue in this way.
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as well they should
its a reciprocal welfare state
the blk matriarchy runs the welfare state and their wht overlords make sure that wht people keep working and paying for it all…gop doesnt care as long as they are seen as the saviors that we must run to as the gop’ers remain as impotent as billy jean king
Of course they have and this is why they should be abolished, State run schools must be politically neutral and this is an indication that they definitely are not,
Better to abolish the state run (i.e., publicly run) schools abolished and use a voucher system to fund private schools.
I;ve never been in favor vouchers, Big topic though, Also a public system is required because there will never be enough private schools,
Setting aside the issue of being for or against vouchers (your first paragraph) you raise the issue of whether there will be enough private schools. I would say that given how much goes into public education (via teachers union extortion), there would be more than enough money to fund all the private schools needed, and then some.
vouchers keep the gov in control of the money and power
people pay directly to teachers and have a business contract
the poor pay via the money given to them by those who claim they care
if the money isnt given then the poor must “lean” on their so called saviors to contribute
The current system taxes everyone to pay for a public school system that provides public education for anyone with school-age children from K through 12th grade. You apparently disagree with that. The use of vouchers keeps that system in place and does not rely on saviors for parents with school-aged children who are at the beginning of their earnings curve.
How could a government run school possibly be “politically neutral” in a pluralistic society? They were never designed to be “politically neutral”. They were always a power grab.
They used to be fairly neutral. At least as neutral as anything can be when humans are involved. I never knew my teachers politics or sexual orientation, It’s not that difficult.
” I never knew my teachers politics or sexual orientation, ”
You must be a Boomer. Our teachers in the 40’s and 50’s were gentlemen, WWII veterans for the most part, wore professional clothing; the Ladies looked and dressed like ladies . . . modern teachers look like barn rats headed for the beach at the last bell.
And act like barn rats.
Those that can, do.
Those that can’t, teach.
Correct. 60s and early 70s for me. Even through Viet Nam I didn’t know what their opinion was and I was somewhat politically aware having gotten interested in politics when I was 8.
Oh the one thing I knew is that the schools were anti-drug but that standing cuts across the spectrum. Environmental politics was limited to clean air and water. The students were a bit more political but no one wanted to wreck anything.
My community though was just north of Milwaukee and filled with kids whose parents taught at university, 95% went onto college. Not stupid by any stretch,
Even in college I never really knew the politics or sexual orientation of my professors and most of the students I interacted with. Something basically changed at some point and I’m not sure when.
just b/c you didnt know their politics doesnt mean it wasnt being taught
The government schools were created to indoctrinate the children of low income Irish Catholic parents into Protestantism. Now the indoctrination is being done by secularist leftists.
How is this news? Haven’t we always known this?
We have. Not sure about Mr. and Mrs. John Q Public.
And, of course, it’s really not the teacher’s union’s money that’s flowing into the Dhimmi-crat criminal organization’s coffers, but, taxpayers’ money, approximately 50% of which is derived from conservative taxpayers.
The teacher’s unions are just one of many funnels that exist to direct taxpayer monies into the pockets of Dhimmi-crats’ myriad subsidiary and crony organizations.
How is it taxpayer money? The unions get their money from their members. (Whether voluntarily or by compulsion, but either way it’s coming out of their pockets, not the taxpayers’.)
By far the largest item on my property taxes is the school district.The teachers get their pocket money from property taxes.
The money that goes to the teachers is their salary that the union negotiated for them. Once it gets into their pockets it’s their money, not the taxpayer’s. What they do with it after then is not our business.
Would you claim that anything a soldier spends is really “our” money, and it’s our business how he spends it?!
And the fat bloated public sector unions are “negotiating” fat bloated contracts from fat bloated schools for overpaid public school teachers who funnel the take back to unions. It’s ALL taxpayer dollars.
It is >em>our money, in the sense that their salary is politically obtained. There is constant agitation to increase their pay – and that always accompanies higher dues to the unions, who then advocate for Democrats, who then vote for higher pay for “educators.”
You’re right that teachers ought to be able to spend their earned money on whatever they like. But, for it to be truly earned it would need to be a market value, not politically manipulated and funded by taking the money out of our pockets at gunpoint.
I’m not an advocate of total abolition of public schools. But I do think they should be funded by taxes at the local level and under local control. And I also believe they should not be allowed to unionize. That way shenanigans can be controlled by the people most affected.
Once upon a time, I had a union government job. The union was the American Federation of Teachers. I wasn’t a teacher, but somehow they became the bargaining body for the state agency I worked for. I wasn’t interested in joining the union, but I was told, “You can join the union, pay your dues, and vote for leadership, or you can opt out and we will still take out the same amount as dues because we negotiate your pay.” There was no choice. A percentage of my pay was going to the union one way or another. My choice was to get the heck out of that job as soon as I could. Every dollar spent by government, with a few exceptions, comes from taxpayers in the form of taxes or fees. If you are paid by government, you’re paid from taxpayer taxes in some fashion. We can argue about choices, but most union membership is compulsory, either by joining or paying the union for “representation”. The employee never sees the money paid out in dues. It is a deduction taken right off the top. Unions had their time and place in certain industries and at certain times in history. Today, they are nothing more than money laundering outfits.
the military is the part we ARE suppose to pay for
teachers and unions is the after thought of slimy politicians and of course tacit approval by a weak populace
@p1cunnin in reply to Milhouse. | April 29, 2026 at 9:19 am
A percentage of my pay was going to the union one way or another.
That sounds an awful lot like slavery.
@GWB: Exactly so. I’ve carried two union cards in my life — UFCW for a part time grocery bagging job where the union steward wouldn’t permit me to work one week because I worked more than the 20 hours I was supposed to work as low man on the seniority pole. No one above me wanted to work, so the store was short-handed even though I would have happily gone in. That same union left me with a paycheck for about $3 one week when they took their “initiation fee”. AFT for the government job. In that one, when I was pressured by the patronage people to contribute to the party in power, the union local president rolled her eyes at me like I was the problem for complaining. I had somehow thought that the union was there to protect the workers. I left that job within weeks for one that paid $500 a year more and never looked back.
Years later, in graduate school while working full time, I argued with a classmate about unions. Because I was a manager, she considered me a “parasite”. Her heroic boyfriend was out there organizing people for a union. I asked her if he had ever done the job that he was organizing. Of course not. He had a Sociology degree and was there “helping” those poor people. Nevermind that he had a union-provided car, paid expenses, and a very healthy salary that was more than I was making at the time (and I was 15 years out of undergrad while Mr. Organizer was two years from his degree). Who is the parasite?
Let alone the teachers’ union’s role in breeding student ignorance and sexual grooming.
just another reason they pushed sooo hard to “teach” sex education which they changed that wording to
reproductive etc
This goes along with the reports from Fairfax (again) of teachers advocating through their students to parents on which way to vote in the gerrymander referendum.
Americans continue to ignore the radicalized teachers unions at their own peril. By doing so they get to pretend that their subversion doesn’t matter, but as the evidence stacks up that it does then they will eventually have to deal with the resulting consequences. Raising dysfunctional offspring will create problems for them down the road, similar to the results of letting them be exploited sexually. But by the time most realize how badly their children have been damaged it will be too late to undo, and that is a moral failure they will regret forever.
I dont think most parents cae or they would be marching in the streets and the school boards would change to pro american agendas
thats why and where the gop is failing us bigggg time
Of course things can go on this way.
They’re practically bound to.
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