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American Federation of Teachers Tag

Something to give—surprised—thanks for this morning: an MSNBC anchor staunchly defending school choice and Donald Trump's pick for Secretary of Education . . . while ably and aggressively arguing the issues with the head of America's biggest teachers' union! Stephanie Ruhle is the MSNBC anchor in question, and she took on Randi Weingarten, head of the AFT teachers' union. The topic at hand was Donald Trump's naming of school-choice advocate Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education. Weingarten, acknowledging that the union is "so opposed" to DeVos, repeatedly accused Trump's pick of wanting to take a "sledgehammer" to public schools in an effort to "destabilize"them.

The leftist roots of the Black Lives Matter movement have been exposed many times. This Black Lives Matter rally in Ithaca was full-out anti-capitalist Marxist agitation (the speaker is a Cornell professor): Which explains why the movement is attacking charter schools that actually help black children. Lance Izumi writing in The Philadephia Inquirer has the story, Black Lives Matter vs. charter schools:

Hillary Clinton has changed her mind on the trade deal and gay marriage, but she's not finished flip flopping. During her husband's presidency, Hillary Clinton was a big fan of charter schools. Now that she's seeking the presidency herself, things have changed. Kimberly Hefling reports at Politico:
Hillary Clinton rebukes charter schools Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sounded less like a decades-long supporter of charter schools over the weekend and more like a teachers union president when she argued that most of these schools “don’t take the hardest-to-teach kids, or, if they do, they don’t keep them.” Her comments in South Carolina came straight from charter school critics’ playbook and distanced her from the legacies of her husband, former President Bill Clinton — credited with creating a federal stream of money to launch charters around the country — and President Barack Obama, whose administration has dangled federal incentives to push states to become more charter friendly.

It was "just" a Mayor's race, but it's a tale of how unions funnel money to decide elections, often behind the scenes. The Boston Globe has the scoop, American Federation of revealed as funder behind mysterious pro-Walsh PAC during mayoral campaign (h/t @dbernstein):
Organizers of One Boston, the mysterious political action committee that dumped $480,000 into the Boston mayoral campaign during its final days, confirmed to the Globe today that the American Federation of Teachers funded the group’s efforts to swing the race in favor of Mayor-elect Martin J. Walsh. In a complicated series of transactions, the AFT — a powerful national teachers union — gave the money to One New Jersey, a teachers union-backed political action committee. That group then donated those funds to One Boston, a local affiliate set up to spend money in the Boston mayoral race.