by Casey Harper
The teachers union in the middle of a scandal for influencing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s official school reopening guidance gave nearly $20 million to Democrats in the 2020 election cycle, filings show.
Federal election filings reveal that the American Federation of Teachers and its local affiliates spent $19,903,532 on political donations during the 2020 cycle, with nearly all of the funds going to Democrats and liberal groups.
Last year’s AFT donations include $5,251,400 for the Democrats Senate Majority PAC and $4,600,000 for the Democratic House Majority PAC, according to data compiled by The Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets database.
Besides PACs that supported Congressional Democrats, the AFT network also gave to groups like “For Our Future,” a liberal organization that received more than $1.5 million and heralded Biden’s inauguration on Twitter.
“There is so much to celebrate today,” the group wrote on inauguration day. “While we know there is ‘much to repair, much to restore, much to heal, much to build, and much to gain.’ And we’re ready, #PresidentBiden & #KamalaHarrisVP!”
AFT affiliates gave to Democratic federal Congressional candidates over Republicans more than 99% of the time in the 2020 cycle, filings show.
The AFT has come under fire recently for its role in shaping CDC guidance around schools reopening. The New York Post reported last weekend on emails between top White House, CDC, and AFT officials that show the AFT crafting language and overall working closely with the CDC. The communication intensified ahead of the CDC’s planned Feb. 12 announcement to recommend whether schools should reopen.
In that February announcement, the CDC ultimately sided with the teachers union and delayed issuing guidance that schools should resume fully in-person classes.
After the emails emerged, Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee sent a letter Wednesday to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky alleging that political influence from the teachers unions and White House influenced the federal agency’s official guidance. The Republicans argue the agency put “politics over science and Biden-Harris campaign donors over children.“
“Despite prior questions on the matter, recently released emails show that the AFT and NEA were able to weigh in on and lobby for changes made in the CDC’s Operational Strategy for Reopening Schools, the agency’s guidance for reopening schools around the country,” the Energy and Commerce Committee said in a statement.
The AFT defended its lobbying Thursday, saying the CDC should welcome input from other stakeholders and that it is simply representing the interests of their members.
“The AFT represents 1.7 million educators, healthcare professionals and public employees who spent the last 14 months serving on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic,” AFT President Randi Weingarten said. “So naturally, we have been in regular touch with the agencies setting policy that affect their work and lives, including the CDC. We appreciate that under Dr. Walensky’s leadership, the CDC welcomes stakeholder feedback, as opposed to ignoring it.”
The National Education Association network, another large teachers union that consulted on the CDC guidance, gave nearly $15 million to Democratic-tied causes in the 2020 cycle, the vast majority of its spending. The AFT and NEA both endorsed Biden for president in March of last year.
Critics say the donations show teachers unions used their wealth as leverage to influence the Biden Administration.
“The unions knew exactly what they were buying in 2020,” said Aaron Withe, CEO of the Freedom Foundation. “We now see how well that investment is paying off.
“For over a year now, we’ve been told to listen to the science and to follow the guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control,” Withe added. “Now we learn the government health bureaucracy we’ve been told is leading us through this pandemic is actually taking its cue from the teachers unions who’ve been holding our kids hostage to their political demands.”
Weingarten argues, though, her union lobbies Republicans as well, not just Democrats.
“In fact, we contacted the agency more in 2020 during the Trump administration than we have during the Biden administration in 2021 – requesting additional guidance, questioning policy, providing testimony and offering an educator and healthcare worker perspective,” Weingarten said. “And while we have at times been concerned about their conclusions – as we were initially with the change in classroom physical distancing rules – we respect deeply that the CDC career staff has always taken its responsibility seriously.”
Some on the right have called for Walensky’s resignation over the controversy.
“The CDC is supposed [to] be occupied by scientists who do not bow to political influence. This obviously is not the case under Dr. Walensky’s leadership,” said Rep. Greg Murphy, R-N.C., who is also a doctor. “As the most important public health official in America, she should have had the fortitude to reject AFT’s influence in the CDC’s recommendations.”
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Casey Harper is a Senior Reporter for the Washington, D.C. Bureau. He previously worked for The Daily Caller, The Hill, and Sinclair Broadcast Group. A graduate of Hillsdale College, Casey’s work has also appeared in Fox News, Fox Business, and USA Today. Harper contributes to The Center Square.
Photo “American Federation of Teachers” by American Federation of Teachers.
The government gives money to unions to pay their underfunded pensions to the tune of BILLIONS of dollars. Then the unions give a bit of the money back as campaign contributions.
In my state of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Teacher’s Association MTA does a parasitic Tango dance with my congressman Jim McGovern. Being a one party state the corruption is breath taking. They are like vultures picking the bones of the taxpayer. They no longer hide their marxist philosophy, and the children are very low on their concerns. Taxpayers would become ill if they took the time to see what percentage of salaries and benefits of school budgets. No there are great teacher but with the woke Nazi’s any difference in opinion will result in career destruction. Disgusting!
Are your cities set ablaze by Illiterate barbarians? THANK A TEACHER.
DEFUND?! YES, DEFUND ……………….. Socialist propagandizing “teachers”
SUE the schools, unions & teachers for FRAUD and taking money under false pretences.
For decades failed students have been “passed through the system”
Education. China finds its brightest students with a grueling entrance exam. America dumbs down elite high schools because they don’t have enough unqualified minorities. Thomas Jefferson High School in Virginia has already been enstupidated, and the NYC schools are on the block. The purpose of schools is to admit students who can’t do the work.
New York Post: “With this year’s state math and English exams canceled, a watered-down grading policy enacted, and the tossing of attendance, the key factors for admission to selective schools have been dropped or diminished…. “
We are getting a full on display of the Liberal Educator concept of “DIVERSITY, INCLUSION, and TOLERANCE” Burning cities are their vision of the future.
For decades the Nation’s teachers have been infusing false concepts of entitlement, oppression, as we see in Minneapolis, Seattle and Portland today. Teachers have been attacking the self-image, self-esteem of their White pupils with the Racist Hate message of mythical “White privilege”. Teachers have rabidly attacked the foundations of the Nation to sooth their “Daddy issues”.
MI. Gov. Gretchen Whitless has agreed to a settlement in a case, which sought a historic court order ruling students have a constitutional right to literacy. You do NOT have a “right” to literacy. That is S-T-U-P-I-D. You have to LEARN to read and write .
Well these teacher’s unions have been quietly stuffing their pockets with overly LIBERAL pensions and benefits at the expense of the oppressed People of Color. The Teachers were supposed to be guiding P.O.C. to economic stability and security. Instead they fed the P.O.C. garbage as Teachers stuffed THEIR pockets. Therefore in the spirit of Equality and Reparations which the teachers have LIBERALLY preached for so long it is only proper that 75% of those FAT union pensions be LIBERALLY distributed to the Elderly People of Color who were denied the opportunities the privileged teachers milked for all they could.
The Teachers want SOCIALISM? SOCIALIZE their pensions & perks.
The “Graduates” of American education should be suing their teachers and school administrators for fraud and MISeducation.
As Charlotte Iserbyt claims in her book, ‘The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America’, our educational disaster is by design. ‘They’ do not want critical thinkers.
They DEMAND raises for their FINE work: EXAMPLE: “My son is a college professor. Teaches freshman biology among others. He’s disgusted with what graduates from high school. He showed me just a few of his students responses to essay questions. Honesty, 4th grade grammar and spelling. I was astonished. They simply pass them on without learning a darn thing. The system is broken beyond saving unless it’s abolished and we start over. And yes – it’s all about equality of outcome, not opportunity. Unfortunately our teachers have bought into it.”
And more: https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/65-public-school-8th-graders-not-proficient-reading-67-not-proficient
Amazing— they choose Communist RED as their color — A wave of red-clad teachers …
The end result of their Great Teaching was on parade this weekend across America . ….. Monuments torn down and cities aflame as DOMESTIC TERRORISM is everywhere.
They Really deserve raises — ‘I was a teacher for 17 years, but I couldn’t read or write’ http://www.bbc.com/news/stories-43700153 and the teachers just “moved him on”
Teacher pay raises HELL! Give the Taxpayers a REFUND. The little idiots cannot read or write, and have NO concept of the Constitution, Law, History. ………..The Teacher Unions should be paying DAMAGES to the Kids and America —- A Third Of Millennials Aren’t Sure The Earth Is Round, Survey Finds http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2018/04/05/…-flat-earth-survey/
take their HUGE pension funds and use it to actually educate the kids.
The same “teachers” who taught nothing about economics taught nothing about history or the Constitution …. what they DO teach is “Be PROUD of being stupid and knowing squat …… history is BOOOORING” So the Kids learn nothing about the Bolshevik Holodomor and 66 Million dead Christians and now are bringing the HOLODOMOR here..
Is it a bad thing? Our schools were brainwashing kids anyway.