Money Trails

Why they're really mad:

the Left may not trust President Trump to reassign all the department’s functions to other parts of the federal government, but this sort of restructuring hardly represents the death knell of public education. It does, however, represent a serious threat to the big national teachers unions, and those teachers unions are part of the Left’s funding apparatus. America’s two largest teachers unions—the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association—are notorious for bankrolling Democrats and leftist causes. In the 2024 presidential election cycle, NEA gave $3.2 million to Democrats and $29.2 million to liberal groups, according to Open Secrets. The AFT gave $2.8 million to Democrats and $4.4 million to liberal groups. .... The NEA sent $420,000 to Sixteen Thirty Fund, between 2019 and 2021, for example. Sixteen Thirty Fund, one of the nonprofits established by the for-profit company Arabella Advisors, helped fund other activist groups that staffed and advised the Biden administration. It also funded the Center for American Progress, which fed more than 60 leaders and staff into the Biden administration, and the Human Rights Campaign, which demanded the administration implement a laundry list of LGBTQ+ priorities. (By my count, the Biden administration implemented 75% of HRC’s demands.) The American Federation of Teachers gave $840,000 to Sixteen Thirty Fund from 2020 to 2023, $75,000 to the Center for American Progress in 2019 and $100,000 to Center for American Progress Action in 2023, among others. NEA and AFT also heavily influenced the Biden administration. President Biden notoriously hosted Weingarten and NEA President Rebecca Pringle at the White House on his very first full day in office. This access may be the central thing the teachers unions and their allies fear losing.

No more free ride for them...