WASHINGTON — The two largest teacher unions in America gave more than $43.5 million to liberal advocacy groups since 2022 — including several massive payouts to Democratic political action committees (PACs) during the 2024 election cycle, according to a new report from a conservative education watchdog group.
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) shelled out $43,524,123 between mid-2022 and mid-2024, per a Defending Education report based largely on union disclosures to the Department of Labor.
The cash windfall went to lefty groups that back gun control measures, support racial “equity” and gender transitions for minors as well as abortion access.
Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president and legal fellow at Defending Education, said in a statement the audit “sheds much needed light on exactly what the NEA and the AFT prioritize — and it isn’t America’s schoolkids.”
“Teachers unions don’t educate kids,” Perry added. “They seemingly exist for no other reason than to spend money, complain about parental involvement in their children’s education, and advance left-wing causes wholly unrelated to improving educational outcomes in American schools.”
The contributions included $9.3 million from both AFT and NEA to the left-wing For Our Future Action Fund PAC, which operated primarily in 2024 battleground states.
Another $1.6 million also was funneled from AFT to the House Majority PAC, $1.25 million to the Senate Majority PAC and $250,000 to Future Forward, the primary super PAC backing Kamala Harris’ campaign last year.
A big backer of former President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign as well, AFT President Randi Weingarten caught flak in the early years of the 46th president’s administration for pressuring public health officials to keep schools closed amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
Both the AFT and NEA also pushed the Biden White House and administration health officials to delay the re-opening of in-person learning in Spring 2021, bombshell emails and records obtained by other watchdog groups and congressional investigations showed in 2023.
Weingarten also misrepresented scientific studies demonstrating it was safe for kids to be back in classrooms when testifying about COVID to Congress, according to the scientific authors of that research.
Only in early 2022 did the Biden administration announce that 95% of US public schools had returned to full-time, in-person learning.
Another $500,000 went to the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a nonprofit managed by the dark money network Arabella Advisors and sometimes portrayed as the left’s answer to the right-of-center Koch network.
President Trump on Wednesday called for liberal billionaire George Soros and his son Alex to face racketeering charges for their affiliation with dark money organizations — including Sixteen Thirty — that contributed more than $20 million to groups funding protests against this month’s DC crime crackdown.
Additionally, the NEA gave $100,000 to the Trevor Project, a transgender youth organization that some moms have accused of pushing their pre-teen children toward gender transitions.
“It’s long been the case that teachers’ unions have been hyper-political and given 99% of their donations to Democrats,” added Erika Sanzi, Defending Education’s director of outreach.
“What this report reveals is that they are also giving massive amounts of money to far-left organizations and causes that fight against academic excellence and inject harmful ideology into everything they touch. Students and school staff deserve to be shielded from these entities.”
Nearly 40% of the NEA’s budget goes toward political advocacy, Freedom Foundation CEO Aaron Withe told Fox News, which first reported on the Defending Education document.
“You’d think in light of the decline in union membership in recent years, that they’d start providing value to members that outweighs the cost of membership,” Withe told the outlet. “Instead, they are appeasing the radical base of union members by advocating for men in women’s sports, transitioning minors, antisemitism and other radical ideological stances.”
In 2020, AFT gave more than $2.6 million to Democratic candidates, according to the political donation tracking website OpenSecrets. The NEA contributed more than $2.4 million to Dems over the same period.
