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Federalist Radio Hour
The Shocking Truth About Teachers Unions’ Spending
00:45:12
On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Nicole Neily, president and founder of Defending Education, joins Federalist Elections Correspondent Matt Kittle to examine the key role teachers' unions play in funding left-wing politicians and groups...
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Matt Kittle
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Matt Kittle
And we are back with another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt Kittle, senior elections correspondent at the Federalist and your experience Sherpa on today's quest for knowledge. As always, you can email the show at radiohefderalist.com follow us on x@fdrlst. Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcast and of course, to the premium version of our website as well. Our guest today is Nicole Neely, founder and president of Defending Education, a national grassroots organization working to restore schools at all levels from activists imposing harmful agendas. As you can imagine, Defending Education has a lot of work on its plate. Defending Education is now out with a new investigative report which finds national teachers unions have Contributed More than $660 million to far left organizations and left wing political groups over the past decade. Nicole, thank you so much for joining us on this edition of the Federalist Radio Hour.
- [01:39]
Nicole Neely
Thank you for having me on.
- [01:41]
Matt Kittle
I suppose it's not all that surprising to know that with the state of teachers unions and the way it's been for some time that they're donating to left wing causes, but maybe it's the sheer amount of money that really stands out here and what it's being used for.
- [01:59]
Nicole Neely
Of course, yes. I mean, it is jaw dropping. My coworker looked at the LM2s for the AFT, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education association at the national level, as well as many of their state affiliates. And that's how we got to that $1 billion amount. We went back 10 years looking at things, and I think we were astonished to see some of the line item expenditures. And I think most teachers would be as well, because not every teacher in America is a hardcore progressive activist. Many of them got into this profession just because they want to help children learn. And we found it astonishing that their dues are being weaponized not only against their values, but against the values of, you know, more than half of the country.
- [02:41]
Matt Kittle
Yes. I should note that, you know, $660 million is just the top line. Ultimately, altogether, it's a billion dollars plus. Correct?
- [02:52]
Nicole Neely
Correct. Yeah. And that was, you know, honestly, we didn't even look at all 50 states. We looked at a handful of the biggest ones, California, Florida, New York, Texas, just to get a sense of that. But this is just a baseline. The number is far Higher. And that is jaw dropping because when you think about union dues being deducted from a teacher's paycheck, I think many teachers assume that, all right, this is going to go towards more support in the classroom, maybe some extra professional development days, maybe higher wages, but not towards funding things like Planned Parenthood or the NAACP or many of these political objectives, you know, electing candidates in school board races, et cetera.
- [03:32]
Matt Kittle
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you are, you know, in these cases, in a lot of these states, you are mandated to pay these union dues, you don't have a choice in the matter. And so here you are paying this money, say you are one of the, I suppose the smaller percentage of conservatives in, in education, but there's still plenty out there that has to be infuriating that your money is going to these kinds of causes, not into the classroom, but to causes you don't.
- [04:04]
Nicole Neely
Right. I mean, I look at money going to places like the Trevor Project. The Trevor Project is on the ground in states pushing for what we have called parental exclusion policies that say you as a parent don't have a right to know your child's gender at school. There have been a number of lawsuits brought by teachers saying, I am not comfortable with this. I do not want to keep secrets from parents. That's what some of this money is going towards. The NAACP pushing all of that anti racism in the classrooms, you know, things like that, you know, labeling all of us as racist. That is not, again, like what many teachers want to do. And so to see things, I mean, the Clinton Global foundation, the Clinton Global Initiative, the Hillary Victory Fund, these. She did not win a majority of the vote. And the fact that this is how they chose to spend their money is insult to injury because a lot of these teachers, if they were left to own their own devices, likely to give that money to candidates that were closely aligned with their views or causes or nonprofits that better align with their values, not with this garbage.
- [05:05]
Matt Kittle
Yeah, no doubt about it. It's, again, it has to be just infuriating. But what is a teacher to do? You spend your life, you know, trying to help kids, trying to educate kids, doing that without a political bias in, in what you do, but just simply trying to teach kids to read or, you know, to, to figure out a math equation. And, and this is what you're, you're experiencing. What's the, the biggest area that you of funding? Union dues, union dollars. Again, educator money going into different political areas and agendas.
- [05:47]
Nicole Neely
Yeah, I mean, it's elections. Frighteningly there is $106 million through the California Teachers Association PACS, $32 million to Senate Majority PAC. That's the left of center one for anyone keeping track. $25 million to House Majority PAC. But as well as millions of dollars in a number of states to oppose school choice initiatives. Right. Children trapped in failing schools because schools, public schools get per pupil funding. And so the more butts in seats, the more money that these unit that these school districts have to play with that then can be skimmed off the top by the union Jews. And so I think it's a really perverse thing, but just the sheer, as you said, the sheer scale of the figures is astonishing.
- [06:29]
Matt Kittle
Yeah. This is an entity that is flailing the teachers unions across the country in no small part because of the growth and the popularity of school choice. I'm talking to you in a state, you know, that has pushed out thankfully the, the boundaries of school choice so that a lot more parents can be involved and get out of, you know, some very dismal schools. How much is that having an impact? And, and what are we talking about in terms of dollar figures to, to. In the, the teacher un. School choice?
- [07:10]
Nicole Neely
Yeah, I mean we have seen red states like Kentucky, $7.2 million to oppose choice, 4.3 million in Nebraska, $4.2 million in Maine. So just things like this on the ground that have a real world impact on children. I mean, you know, these kids do not have 10 years to wait for. I mean I live in Virginia for a new governor to be elected for the state senate to flip to pass a bill for a program that has to be stood up and figure out participants like there are children whose kids. There are children who are being bullied today. There are kids who are being transitioned by their public schools behind their parents backs today. And so for that to be the union's primary concern is our money and our power. Sorry about your kids. You have to break a couple eggs to make an omelet. I find absolutely reprehensible as I think
- [08:02]
Matt Kittle
anybody with any heart, any common sense. And my, by the way, my condolences for your, your new, your change of governance in, in Virginia. How is the moderate Abigail Spanberger working out for, for the folks in Virginia in particular, the, the folks in education.
- [08:29]
Nicole Neely
It's not great, you know, but I think it's going to get worse before it gets better. Which I say as a former chicag, as someone who lived in Los Angeles. Right. I mean it's going to get worse before we get better. I think Virginia might be following the path of New York, of Chicago, where she's going to run out of other people's money pretty quickly. I sit on the board of university in Virginia and one thing we've been keeping a close eye on is the governor's trying to roll back and the state legislature is trying to roll back a lot of the right to work provisions that we had in the state. But that is going to impact a lot of entities, bottom lines. I mean, if collective bargaining is put in place for public universities, university employees, that's going to add millions of dollars onto even small universities, bottom lines. And there is not a lot of wiggle room for many entities. Not everybody is UVA that has a giant multimillion dollar endowment. And so this is going to put a lot of pressure on a lot of institutions. And I just don't think they're prepared for those consequences.
- [09:28]
Matt Kittle
You know, Nikki, it would be one thing if there was success coming out of these schools if the Milwaukee instance didn't have, you know, in, in some of its classes, an 8 or 10% proficiency rate in reading and in math. It would be one thing if the Chicago school systems actually were reaching and teaching the basics, preparing kids for their, their futures and preparing them to be good members of society. But that's not happening. A billion dollars over the last 10 years has gone to, as you said before, all kinds of ridiculous things. Are parents pushing back on this? Are school boards finally pushing back on this?
- [10:24]
Nicole Neely
I think they're pushing back more than they were before. But I think it's important. Remember, the extent of union meddling in education is so deep. It has really impacted every element of the system of education industrial complex. I mean, even things as basic as proficiency scores in states. You know, we have this national test, the naep, the nation's report card, and we have heard a lot over the past two years about how NAEP scores in the wake of the pandemic kind of fell off a cliff. Proficiency in math, reading, et cetera, is bad. Even before the pandemic it was not great. But in states, it's interesting because not every state standard actually aligns to what the national criteria is. So we as parents have been told for years, oh, your child is proficient, your child is making XYZ standard. And it turns out that in a number of states that is actually lower than the national average. And so your kid is not at proficiency level. So we as families have been gaslit for a long time. I mean, I think back to during COVID when parents were screaming Bloody murder about school closures. And we were told, no, it's fine, there's no learning loss taking place. Stop screaming. You are racist and sexist for wanting to reopen schools. That's what's aligned with the Chicago Teachers Union, thank you very much. But no. We know our children. We know darn well that our kids are not thriving. And to be told by a taxpayer funded administrator, your kids are fine, shut your mouth and move on was a slap in the face. So that is concerning. But even you think about why teachers are leaving the profession. We are told over and over again by people like Randy Weingarten and Becky Pringle, it's because of low pay. We have to increase teacher pay. Increase teacher pay. It turns out when you look at polling, one of the main reasons that teachers leave is because they feel unsupported in things like school discipline. When we have students that think that it's okay to punch a teacher in the face or to assault a fellow classmate and then not be held accountable for it, that's a real disincentive for wanting to remain in the classroom. And so things like that. I mean, the system has really eroded very steadily over the past several years because of these insidious aspect of the teachers unions placing identity politics over our children's achievement and safety.
- [12:32]
Matt Kittle
Yeah, indeed. We're going to get more into that coming up in just a minute. But I did want to pause and talk a little bit more about the pandemic years and just how hard these unions fought to keep teachers out of classes. And they kept saying, well, it's all about safety and it's all about this and that. And then when they refuse to reopen schools, we saw the deterioration not only of grades of academics, we saw the deterioration of mental health profoundly. And, and now six years later, what we have from teachers unions about plummeting achievement scores and, and racial gaps is. Well, you know, the pandemic that hit us so hard. Was it the pandemic or was it the policies of these public schools taken over by these radical left teachers unions?
- [13:35]
Nicole Neely
Yeah, no, it was certainly the policies of these radical teachers unions. I think back to when many of us wanted schools to reopen so that our children could actually learn in person. The Chicago Teachers Union accused us all of being racist and sexist and misogynist. The California Teachers association actually put out a laundry list of demands for their criteria for reopening schools, which included things like a moratorium on new charter schools in the state, Medicare for all. I mean, you know, things like that.
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Matt Kittle
What does that have to do with reopening schools and doing what is in the best interest of our kids?
- [14:11]
Nicole Neely
It didn't. Right. It was a hostage situation. Oh, you want your kid to learn. Nice school system you have there. Be a be ashamed if something happened to it. These are children's lives, right? I mean when we kept schools closed for years, the message that families saw, that children saw was that school doesn't matter. And that is why we now have off the charts truancy rates, which is, you know, we are setting these kids up for a lifetime of failure. Education is iterative, it builds on itself. You know, what you learn in second grade helps set you up for success in third grade, third grade sets you up for fourth grade, et cetera. But when you have ripped away the basics from these children and then socially promoted them because the teachers don't want the hassle of a child re repeating a class because they don't haven't mastered the subject matter, then those kids are just going to be behind for the rest of their lives. Those kids will never get good jobs. They will never get to stand on their own two feet. They will not thrive. And that's because the people in charge were lazy and political. It's terrible.
- [15:10]
Matt Kittle
And there's a lot of money, of course to a lot of money continue to prop up this failed system. I think about in particular the governor of the state of Wisconsin, Tony Evers, far left Democrat who for years, about a decade served as the school's superintendent of public instruction. And he signed a bill I should back up was a few years back he signed a budget and was able to, because of Wisconsin's veto authority that governors have, he was able to take out, you know, a preposition here or a word there and he decided unilaterally that the public school systems would get increases in funding at what, two and a half, maybe even 4%. Property taxes would go up not for the budget cycle but for the next 400 years. How he was able to do that is amazing. And you would think, well any court is going to say that cannot stand. Wisconsin has a leftist Supreme Court 5, 52 majority. And it said yep, that's just fine. So this is the kind of wall that parents and you know, common sense community members are up against because you have these politicians bought and paid for by these teachers unions doing exactly the kind of stuff pulling of shenanigans that Tony Evers did.
- [16:56]
Nicole Neely
Yeah, but even, I mean I think back to when it was the height of COVID Congress passed the Bipartisan act to, you know, reopen schools, dumping hundreds of I think was $190 billion through the Esser act into schools. And I think, you know, many of us thought, okay, I'm not thrilled with that. But I assumed the money was going to go towards air purifiers, you know, sanitation equipment, Clorox wipes to get our kids back into school. And then in retrospect, look at how the money was spent. Unfortunately there were not a lot of guardrails on that. And so blue states like Illinois, like California, pissed the money way, surprise, surprise on progressive priorities like social emotional learning, like DEI classes and curriculum, things like that. Or sometimes bringing on full time staff that clearly have benefits and need to be paid in perpetuity, not with just with this one time funding. And so now school districts are still paying the bills for things that they committed to kind of in this intoxication like money rush, gold rush of 2021, 2022. In the meantime, schools children never made up that learning loss. And we now are facing a birth dearth. I mean there are fewer children in America these days and so there are going to be fewer butts in seats going forward in perpetuity. And so to say that public schools in Wisconsin will get more money year over year regardless of is foolish. I mean that is where are these children coming from? And we can't import them all from the southern border, unfortunately, which is clearly what the biden administration tried to do. I remember there being huge problems in representative Stiles district, et cetera. I mean looking at how some of these communities, at the impact of immigration on these schools, they ended up spending more money because they had to hire translators and provide wraparound services for these families. And so, so this is, I mean the destruction, it is hard to overestimate the destruction that public teachers unions have wrought on american society.
- [18:58]
Matt Kittle
No doubt. But isn't it all by design when we're talking about a lot of these categories, you know, as the left likes to call it, intersectionalities, you know, it's just, don't you see the movement here between the invasion in over the, the four years of what I like to call the auto pen presidency of Joe biden. But you know, we saw millions and millions of illegal immigrants coming in that was by design to bolster the democrat power base eventually when they can find some kind of amnesty to make these folks u. S citizens so they can vote, they can deliver, you know, seats in congress for democrats. But at the same time the democrats very much fueled financially by teachers unions still have a lot of money and still have outsized power. They want all of this for, you know, kids in. In their seats, not to improve education, but so they get more education money per pupil. That. That cannot be a sustainable system, Nick.
- [20:16]
Nicole Neely
Right. No, I mean, that's why our children are not learning how to think. They're learning what to think. And so they want this captive audience of minor children without families knowing what is going on in the classroom so that they can impress their values on our kids in a way that we have no idea what's going on. I mean, the reason that we pulled our kids out of public school, I got really frustrated because I would get an email once a week from the teacher, and they'd say something very, you know, vanilla, like, oh, we learned about the 60s. And I just. I remember thinking to myself, what part of the 60s are you learning about the Beatles or the Weather Underground? Like, there's a real difference here. And we know this is not a partisan issue. Children do better when the adults in their lives cooperate. Right. So if I'm in regular contact with the teacher, I learned that they're doing a lesson about World War II. I'll make schnitzel. I'll. We'll watch the Great Escape. You know, I want to bring these lessons to life and be supportive, but if I'm kept at arm's length, I cannot. And when the authority figures at school are making me out to be a villain because Mommy is a Christian, Mommy is a Republican, that starts to degrade my relationship with my child. And I'm pretty sure that those superintendents, that math teacher is not going to be there to pick my child up off the bathroom floor when she breaks up with her boyfriend when she's 19 years old. There is lasting damage that's being done, and they are not being. They're not going to be accountable for what they have done to families or children.
- [21:45]
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- [22:21]
Matt Kittle
Our guest today is Nicole Neely, founder and president of Defending Education, a national grassroots organization working to restore schools at all levels from activists imposing harmful agendas defending education, is out with a new investigative report which finds national teachers unions have contributed more than a billion dollars to far left organizations and left wing political groups over the past decade. And that's what I wanted to ask you too. Speaking of by design, isn't that the design? It seems more and more to me that the design of the teachers unions in that universe is to do the old Hillary Clinton thing. And an emphasis on old Hillary Clinton. And that is, you know, it takes a village. And I think when she said it takes a village to raise a child, what she meant by that is it takes a government, a radical left based government to raise a child.
- [23:27]
Nicole Neely
Yes. I mean, I think about when a couple years ago the Michigan Democratic party had a Facebook post that they had to take down in shame afterwards. But they said the point of public school is to teach children what society needs them to know. And I thought, oh, what is kind of unsaid is that you know better than I do as mom. What, what my kids need to know. My kids need to know about what pansexualism is. They need to know about the oppressor, oppressed matrix. They don't need to know about Judeo Christian traditions. They don't need to know about the history of western society. I got it. Where it is that, you know, we're gonna push you and your gods and your guns and your guns out of the way because we know better. And it's their real arrogance. I mean, and then we saw that through line carried through to when President Obama released that Life of Julia video, right? It was the government taking care of you from cradle to grave, from birth to death. Uncle Sugar will take care of you. You don't need a husband, you don't need a job. The federal government has you from beginning to end. And that also is really scary.
- [24:30]
Matt Kittle
It is very scary. And that is the thinking of the, the modern left. And it's, it's not something that happened overnight. I think it's something a lot of Americans woke up to and said, what, what, what happened? What happened to our schools, what happened to our teachers, what is happening to our kids. But this is something that has been inculcated for generations. Now you want to talk about learning about the 60s. What we know about the 60s is that's when this radical Marxist movement, this oppressed and oppressor style of teaching critical theory as it has been labeled by Marxist, that's when it all started. But it really, really picked up during the Obama years. And of course we saw it off the charts during the, the Biden years. A lot of money lobbied by teachers union to spend our money on these kinds of things that are creating more and more division. So Nikki, on that topic, we just saw yet another attempt on the life of the President of the United States by what by all accounts appears to be an absolutely radicalized leftist, you know, a teacher in the California higher ed system. So that's got to tell you, you know, some of what you need to know. But how respons for this assassination culture on the left that we're seeing? How responsible is the public education system and the teachers unions?
- [26:12]
Nicole Neely
Yeah, I mean, I think we are seeing this is the poison fruit being borne by this tree. I think about, you know, a couple years ago when there were all those encampments on college campuses. My kind of favorite article that came out at the time, the Associated Press interviewed one of the students at Vanderbilt University who had been arrested. And the student was indignant and they said, you know, I don't know why I'm getting in trouble. My activism was in my application essay. You knew what you were getting when you admitted me. And I thought, all right, like that's it, right? The mask has slipped. When you start to tell children from a very young age in the K12 system when their civics education says America is criminal, right? It's this blood, you know, like we have been tainted from day one. We're a bad country. That's one thing. Then when you are taught action, civics, the proper response to any time anybody hurts your feelings is to get out and protest. That's another thing. When students are not being held accountable for disrupting a classroom, hitting somebody, they just go and sing Kumbaya in the principal's office through something called restorative justice. Then they know there's no consequences for actions. Is it any wonder then that we see students punching each other in the face on college campuses because they think it is appropriate to meet physic words that I disagree with with physical violence or to attack or murder someone who I disagree with? I mean, they're not learning how to interact in civil society, in a modern society. And I do place that squarely at the foot of schools today of teacher unions pushing, using highly inflammatory language, Right. That we're all evil. That it is, you know, that this is a real, this is a social justice war and our kids are foot soldiers. I resent that. And I will, you know, I will stand at thwart History and yell, stop until the day I die, because that is not what our schools should be used for. And I, and I will, I will go to my grave fighting that.
- [28:11]
Matt Kittle
Well, it's severe identity politics really, to the extreme. And that's what the left is all about. And it's trying to create alliances and allies, if you will, of different aggrieved populations or demographics. And ultimately the whole idea is to. To use this army to go after conservatives and traditional values. And let's face it, with the rise of systemic racism, a particular individual, a particular demographic, and that is white people in this country. And, you know, it just begs the question, why? What are our kids learning? Why are we paying for this? Why are we paying for a trip back in time? Because that's really where we're at. That's what so many people, white people, black people, Asian people, Hispanics fought for during the civil rights movement for equality. They didn't fight for the system of, of equity that says, you know, someone is the oppressor and there's. There's nothing that that person can do to change his or her racism. That is, that has got to affect the system in a profoundly dangerous way. Why is this still being allowed?
- [29:52]
Nicole Neely
I think there are, sadly, there are a lot of people that are making money from sewing division as opposed to actually solving things. I mean, the fact that it is now considered, quote, unquote, evil to be colorblind. Right. That it is what I think the term is, color conscious now is the right thing to do. I mean, that's the kind of thing that makes, you know, that was Jim Crow, that was the kkk. To see and value color before everything else is insane to castrate gay boys as opposed to. Opposed to accepting them for who they are and saying, you're right, you were born in the wrong body, let's just chop it up. That's inconvenient. I mean, it is appalling that we are at this. We are. It feels like we are truly through the looking glass that there are people who think this is appropriate. They are raising money on it, they are getting elected to higher office on these issues. It is really. It is truly a mystery that this, that this is happening at schools of all levels and just in society. Reliar marriage.
- [30:51]
Matt Kittle
Well, defending education has done a great job of tracking this money, where it's raised, where it is going to. And we've talked a bit about this, and I know you can't answer this question, but I just want to get a sense of it based on Your tracking of the dollars. How much of my tax dollars. Your tax dollars, Everybody's tax dollars. Went to the Mayday protest where teachers walked out of schools, decided they weren't going to come in that day because. Protest for Marxist values.
- [31:27]
Nicole Neely
It's a great question. I think it's. Yeah, as you said, it's hard to put a dollar amount on it because there is the money that's going to these unions that's being doled out and the money's going to the unions from their dues, but then that's being doled out to these activist groups that are astroturfing. They're making it look like this is an organic protest. They're making it look like this is quote, unquote, student led Spoiler. It's not that it is, but you look at some of the community activism in places like Minneapolis, who is paying for all these burritos that the local, you know, that the communities are giving out to people who is printing the signs? Even when I went to the Supreme Court in January for the day of the women's sports arguments, I went over to the other side and I was looking and it was kind of a rainbow coalition of every progressive group. There are people there chanting about Palestine and ICE and Iran and, and Gaza and all this wacky stuff. And I was like, what does this have to do with the issue at hand? But there are these national, multimillion dollar national organizations, Human Rights Campaign, Trevor Project, naacp, et cetera, that had put all this money into that. And so some of that's coming from the teachers unions. But also, I mean, let's remember, I think one of the genius things that President Trump did at the start of his term was when they started cutting off all the grants through usaid, the Education Department, et cetera, to a lot of these progressive activist organizations. It was basically the kiss of death to a lot of them. You know, I have been the dummy who has gone around and raised money from the private sector for 20 years to run nonprofits, but they were getting tens of millions of dollars every year from the federal teat. And it turns out that we're able to raise money from society because people agree with what we're doing. They have to go and get money straight from the federal government because people don't agree with what they're doing. And so I think there's both a direct money trail that probably could be disentangled as well as this indefinite indirect. What's what feels like it's almost money laundering through these teachers union Entities, because it's the left hand giving the right hand money. It's just them kind of creating what seems like an artificial edifice of a lot of different groups from different backgrounds with different interests, all agreeing on the same endpoint. But that's not what's happening at all. It's all just fake. On the other, on the other side.
- [33:42]
Matt Kittle
And remember, listeners of the Federalist Radio Hour, the phrase that pays today is federal teat. Make sure you, make sure you text in. Perhaps, perhaps you'll win a prize with that, that catchphrase today. No, I, I think that is a, a perfect way to describe all of this. The federal teat. I mean the, the money that is pushed out, forced out, has been forced out over the years and is still being forced out. I mean, that's one of the question concerns I have, is that despite his best efforts, this is such a massive bureaucracy, Nikki, that the President can only do so much and obviously at every turn he's been fought by a, you know, a leftist district court, federal district court, judicial system. And you know, it's, it's just more and more money. How much money is coming into these groups from the George Soros's of the world though? The big leftist sugar daddies.
- [34:52]
Nicole Neely
Yeah, and there's, there are so many. I mean, the money on the left dwarfs the money on the right. They use entities like Arabella Advisors, the 1630 Fund, groups like that, that obscure. So the Tides Foundation. So individual donors will dump money into these kind of collective funds and then that money will go back out. So that obscures the paper trail of where money is coming and then where money is intended to go to. And I think that has been something that is a little bit confusing and frustrating for people to figure out. Okay, what part does Neville Roy Singham have in this? What part do this. Does the Soros foundation or Mackenzie Bezos or people like that that are funding some of the really destructive things going on? Because clearly the left's favorite parlor game is let's destroy the lives of donors to conserve the causes who have the temerity to believe in things like, like a colorblind education or that a locker room should be only for men or for women, but not for a mix of both. They love to destroy lives and we're not allowed to play that game against them because they like to hide their money trail.
- [35:57]
Matt Kittle
That's the most insidious part of this too, is that we are now really impacting, negatively impacting the lives of kids to the point of, you know, gender Mutil. Mutilation. And you brought. Brought this up before, but I know defending education has looked at, in particular a case in the San Diego school system. I know it's certainly, unfortunately not alone, but in that system, you can have children and. And very young children decide one day that, hey, I don't think I'm a. A boy. I think I might be a little girl. I want to wear dresses. I want to call myself Melinda. And that school district, according to its policy, is, you go ahead and do that. In fact, we're going to support that decision and we're going to make sure your parents don't know anything about it, because parents can't be trusted. Again, we're raising your kids. This is. This is a sickness that is going on across the country. Where do you see all of that going?
- [37:02]
Nicole Neely
We have, frighteningly, we've been tracking policies like this since 2023. We've identified about 1200 school districts across the country and all 50 states and counting where this is taking place.
- [37:11]
Matt Kittle
Wow.
- [37:12]
Nicole Neely
School boards that have affirmatively passed votes, resolutions saying parents don't have a right to know this information. I mean, I think Eau Claire, Wisconsin, we got some teacher training materials that said that knowledge must be earned. No, I'm pretty sure I earned it when I had my child, full stop. You, as the English teacher or the Spanish teacher, you do not have that right to make that decision. And if the reason that we have been told for the need for policies like this is that, well, sometimes families are unsupportive, they might hurt their kid, well, you know what? Every school employee is a mandatory reporter. If they believe that a child is in danger, they are legally obligated to report that to Child Protective Services. CPS is an onerous process. That is not a process I would wish on anybody. But as part of that, there is due process built into that. So families are able to. To provide evidence that they are good parents, you know, that they are. You know, that they love their children, et cetera. It's not just some, you know, science teacher saying unilaterally, she's a Catholic. I think she's an unfit mother. You're not allowed to do that. And so the fact that this is happening from coast to coast, in some cases driven by state law. I mean, I think in California, in New Jersey, districts that try to kind of go against the grain there and say no, we want families to be read in on the process. State attorneys general sued individual districts to try and get them to rescind those policies. And so there is real strong arming in some of these blue states taking place. Unfortunately, in California, that policy has been enjoined, at least for the time being. But this is. The fact that this has spread so widely so quickly is. I mean, it really takes your breath away.
- [38:52]
Matt Kittle
It really does. I want to get to a point in this society, I hope we're heading there, where mandatory reporters are parents and fellow teachers who say, enough of this. You are not going to try, try to push your gender politics to the detriment of these little kids. We are going to report this to an authority that's going to take a look at your policies and what you're doing. That's. See, it's, it's twisted, I think, in a lot of Americans. The vast majority of Americans, I think, believe that it is twisted into, you know, that this is the right thing to, to trans kids and to do all of that sort of thing with certainly without the, the parents know of this. And it reminds me of a school district in the Madison area. I've, I've relayed this story a number of times talking about these issues, but I think it's, it's so salient. And that is there was a teacher in one of these school districts a few years back, had a sign on her door that says, if your parents don't support your gender decisions, I'm your parent. Now that gets. Gets us back into the whole notion that there is, you know, there is an arrogance that these people know better than the people who brought these children into the world who are raising them. All of that. And that, to me is. It's a stunning place to be in this country. We don't have much more time. And so I do want to get into looking ahead had. And I guess the final question is how much of this money is going to go into. Is going into the midterms and eventually go into the presidential contest in, in 2028. And with that, are we seeing unions continue to lose, teachers unions lose strength, or are they gaining power?
- [41:00]
Nicole Neely
Yeah, no, I think they are losing strength. I mean, we have had some great governors, like Governor DeSantis in Florida pass bills that say, okay, you want your local union to be recertified, you have to have 50% or more of the eligible members in your district sign on. And in places like Miami Dade county, they're not able to hit those numbers. People are realizing that they don't have to, that they don't want their money to go to things like this. And so, and so while the numbers of Teachers in the unions have been diminishing. The unions have kind of been playing a shell game by trying to open up membership to other people. So you as just like an average member of the community could become an NEA or an AFT member, which is kind of funny to me. Paraprofessionals, you know, the assistants in the classroom. And so they don't even really speak for all the teachers, which is something else I think that people forget is Becky Pringle, Brandi Weingarten. They do not have a voice or a mandate from a majority of American teachers. So that is important in and of itself. But they will rage against the dying of the light. Clearly they will be pumping a ton of money into the midterms through, I mean some of these national entities like the Senate Majority pac, House Majority pact that they have funded. But I think it's important to remember that after the Janus decision a couple years ago, the unions made a very conscious decision that they would just run people, people for school boards in some of these elections, for state legislative races, people who would then do their bidding. I mean we have that in Chicago. Thank you, Brandon Johnson, a former CTU organizer. But when you have school board members that will vote through an insane collective bargaining agreement that says, all right, we're going to hire on the basis of race, these people get special treatment. The union's bidding is still being done. And so I think electorally they are planning on playing heavily. It worries me that they want to elect hard left candidates like, you know, Graham Plantner or in Michigan, El Said or James Talarico in Texas. And so I think things like that are important for listeners to realize that the unions have this big cash on hand advantage. They will do the get out the vote the day of the election, you know, assuming we get back to actually voting on the day of our elections in the future. And so things like that, you know, we are up against a very well oiled machine. And so it's really important that our friends get out, they vote, they donate just to try and frankly get to a level playing field.
- [43:34]
Matt Kittle
Yeah, no doubt about it. And what we're seeing now with Graham Plantner is the left is actually truly supporting Nazi candidates. A guy with a, you know, with these, with the Nazi tattoo on has got a lot of explaining to do, but just real radical left candidates and they are supporting candidates in the long game. And that's what the teachers unions, the left in general, that's what they have done better than conservatives. They're playing the long game. And the long game is not necessarily, although they are they're involved in funding national races, but they're really at the local level, as you mentioned, and that is what is impacting our education the most. I want to thank our guest today, Nicole Neely, for joining us. Nicole is the founder and president of Defending Education, a national grassroots organization working to restore schools at all levels from activists imposing harmful agendas. Nicole, where can we find your your latest report?
- [44:45]
Nicole Neely
Our website is defendinged.org we're also on all the usual social media channels so we can be found anywhere and we encourage people to send us us tips through our website as well.
- [44:54]
Matt Kittle
Absolutely. Thank you for your time. You've been listening to another edition of the Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Matt kd, senior elections correspondent at the Federalist. We'll be back soon with more. Until then, stay lovers of freedom and anxious for the fray. I heard the faint voice of reason and then it faded away.