Over the last year, President Trump has made it his mission to ensure that all organizations and institutions receiving federal support comply with federal regulations. Higher education, for example, has seen over 4,000 grants—totaling billions of dollars—canceled, ending years of Americans’ tax dollars being spent on ridiculous, ideologically driven causes.
Public education players, such as teachers’ unions, however, have not faced the same level of federal oversight as their postsecondary counterparts. As a result, they have continued to morph into a rapacious political leviathan.
What are Teachers’ Unions?
Teachers’ unions are classified as 501(c)(5) organizations, receiving tax-exempt status from the United States government and operating under the condition that “[t]he objects of the organization must be the betterment of conditions of those engaged in the pursuits of labor.”
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA) are the largest teachers’ unions in the United States and collect hundreds of millions of dollars in dues each year. These funds are ostensibly used for collective bargaining over wages and working conditions, legal representation, contract negotiation, and professional development.
Lavish Spending and Corruption
Recent reports, however, have uncovered unscrupulous spending by union administration on frivolous personal luxuries—this along with already generous, six-figure salaries.
Earlier this summer, Education Week reported that NEA union President Becky Pringle spent $8,500 of teachers’ dues on three days of personal hairstyling. AFT union President Randi Weingarten, meanwhile, is currently under investigation by the Committee on Education and the Workforce for her suspected use of hundreds of thousands of dollars on “first-class travel, family-related expenses, and large vendor payments,” including a premium limousine service and full-time driver. Pringle and Weingarten’s annual incomes are $481,000 and $499,000, respectively—nearly seven times what the average U.S. teacher earns today.
To add insult to injury, Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Stacy Davis Gates was the subject of this damning headline by Illinois Policy: “Chicago Teachers Union president fails to pay her bills… again.” The article detailed how Gates, known for her outspoken epithets on the rich paying their “fair share,” has racked up thousands of dollars in unpaid utility bills over the last few years—all while bringing in a hefty $265,150 salary.
A 2023 report confirms the mishandling of funds: The AFT spends nearly 60 percent of its $220 million annual revenue on compensation for its 353 employees and political allies, as opposed to just 25 percent on support for its 1.8 million members, from whom the revenue originates.
[RELATED: AAUP President Embraces ‘Militant Action,’ Betrays Founding Mission]
Political Activism Over Education
Beyond the sheer frivolity of teacher union higher-ups’ spending, teacher unions—and their treasuries—are heavily involved in far-left political activism.
It has long been apparent that teacher unions do not prioritize students’ well-being—one need only look at the reading, writing, and math scores of K-12 students in union-dominated states to see that students are suffering academically. But do teacher unions even care for their own constituents?
Former Department of Education Press Secretary Angela Morabito told Fox News, “We’re learning now that teacher unions aren’t really here for their teacher members, either. These are first and foremost Democratic lobbying groups that shovel piles of cash every year into radical progressive causes while teachers are left dipping into their own pockets just to buy school supplies. They take money out of teachers’ paychecks and they funnel them into radical politics.”
AFT President Weingarten, for example, was a longtime member of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and openly protests at far-left events such as the “No Kings” rallies. I personally sat in on an AFT Action Zoom call, where the discussion ranged from “police brutality” and ICE raids to the status of the “Big Ugly Bill,”—the nickname members used for the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” The word “education” was not mentioned a single time.
Radical NEA Proposals
In July, the 2025 NEA Handbook was leaked to the internet, revealing a range of radical proposals and further instances of fund misuse.
Section I-55 of the handbook supports the concept of white supremacy, saying, “The National Education Association believes that, in order to achieve racial and social justice, educators must acknowledge the existence of white supremacy culture as a primary root cause of institutional racism, structural racism, and white privilege.” It further alleged that “[e]ducators must also work to prohibit institutionally racist systems and policies that have governed our society” and kept minorities from “full participation in American life.”
Meanwhile, the NEA approved over $1 million for radical measures, including $32,500 to support students protesting ICE and deportations, $85,125 to increase recruitment of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) educators, and $209,025 to further LGBT curriculum in public schools and help educators in “avoiding possible disciplinary action” as a result of doing so.
Further, the NEA’s section on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, in which the union promised to recognize the “more than 12 million victims of the Holocaust from different faiths, ethnicities, races, political beliefs, genders, and gender identification, abilities/disabilities, and other targeted characteristics,” elicited warning bells that the NEA was attempting to erase Jews from the Holocaust. Congressman Tim Wahlberg said in response that the NEA Handbook “obscures the fact that Jews were the primary target of the Holocaust, with 6 million Jews having been murdered at the hands of the Nazis.”
It didn’t come as a surprise when NEA almost simultaneously submitted a proposal to break ties with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) this summer, saying, “[The] NEA will not use, endorse, or publicize any materials from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), such as its curricular materials or its statistics.”
Freedom Foundation CEO Aaron Withe said the following in response:
By choosing to disassociate themselves from this country’s most respected defender of American Jews and the nation of Israel, NEA leaders have laid bare their bigotry for the world to see. At a time when anti-Semitism has come roaring back into fashion with those on the leftist extreme, the country’s largest labor union has chosen to align itself with the enemies of our traditional allies in the Mideast while simultaneously offending thousands of Jewish educators within its own ranks — to say nothing of the countless Jewish students and parents in U.S. schools.
The NEA Executive Committee ultimately rejected the NEA’s proposal, but state-level unions have found success in their anti-Semitic, anti-Israel efforts. Earlier this year, a union representing City University of New York passed a resolution to withdraw all union funds from Israeli companies and government bonds.
[RELATED: Why Faculty Unions Could Destroy Our Universities]
Union Money and Politics
If this evidence weren’t sufficient to prove impropriety, the NEA and the AFT are closely tied to political campaigns and elections. While labor unions are permitted to lobby under certain restrictions, American Culture Project Senior Fellow Corey D’Angelis went so far as to call major teachers’ unions “Democrat money-laundering operations” due to their millions of dollars worth of contributions to liberal groups and the Democratic party; union contributions to Republican and conservative groups were spare change in comparison.
The NEA is the only teachers’ union chartered by the federal government, which lends a false sense of legitimacy to the organization. It is tasked with “elevating the character and advancing the interests of the profession of teaching.” Despite this, the union has consistently displayed an unseemly level of partisanship for a federally sanctioned organization.
Calls for Accountability
In response to its overreach, the Defense of Freedom Institute (DFI) released its report, The Neglected Charter, urging Congress to hold the NEA accountable to its federal mandate. The report says the NEA’s story is one of “militant organizers pushing for trade unionism for teachers and winning fights with political foes,” aided by “external influences that allowed the NEA to dominate the public-sector collective bargaining landscape and local, state, and federal political races and appointments over the last fifty years.” These trends, it concludes, “combined to make the NEA the thoroughly politicized behemoth—an opponent of education freedom, parents’ rights, and traditional family values—that exists today.”
Only this summer was legislation introduced to enforce federal oversight: the Stopping Teachers Unions from Damaging Education Needs Today (STUDENT) Act would “rededicate the organization to the pursuit of increased student learning and quality education in schools across the United States.” If passed, the NEA would be required to halt any Critical Race Theory (CRT) or Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) measures, submit an annual report to Congress, and sharply curtail its political activism and lobbying.
The STUDENT Act is only the beginning. Teacher unions are undeniably guilty and must be held accountable for their financial exploitation, promulgation of a radical agenda, and all-around false advertising. They do not accurately represent their members; instead, they misuse funds for their personal and political benefit, while failing to achieve the core of their alleged mission: to protect the rights and advance the interests of educators.
Image: “Randi Weingarten, of American Federation of Teachers, at the People’s Rally Against the GOP Tax Scam at the US Capitol, December 13, 2017,” by Hillel Steinberg on Flickr
