Posts tagged NEA
Fighting Hunger on the Picket Line: Bold New Bill Stands with Striking Workers and Their Families
April 2, 2025 // Under current rules, households with striking members are excluded from SNAP eligibility unless already qualified before the strike. The proposed legislation would eliminate this restriction, allowing striking workers to access critical nutrition assistance. Additionally, the bill would affirm eligibility protections for public sector workers fired for striking and ensure income-eligible households with striking members can still receive SNAP benefits.
Pay for Play: Al Sharpton Books Labor Bosses Who Pour Millions Into His Nonprofit on MSNBC Show
March 30, 2025 // In the past year alone, Sharpton, who hosts PoliticsNation on the weekends, has interviewed the presidents of five unions that have given his nonprofit a total of $6.3 million: American Federation of Teachers, National Education Association (NEA), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), American Federation of Government Employees, and American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). In all, labor unions have given nearly $8 million earmarked as "gifts," "grants," or payments for "political activities" to the National Action Network, which in some years has paid Sharpton a $1 million salary and paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for private jets and limo services.
Idaho teachers union plots campaign to target conservatives in 2026 primaries
March 29, 2025 // But while the IEA may be nonpartisan in the sense that it doesn’t care about party labels per se and will happily back candidates running as Republicans if they support the IEA, there’s no disputing that the union’s ideology places it on the far-left flank of Idaho politics. As a Freedom Foundation analysis of the IEA’s political activity in 2024 previously documented: “The IEA behaves exactly as one would expect of a far-left advocacy group in a conservative state. The union attempts to curry favor by endorsing Republicans running in safe elections when the outcome isn’t in doubt, though rarely do such endorsements come with meaningful financial support. In GOP primary elections, the IEA focuses its resources on defeating select ideological adversaries and, as soon as the general election rolls around, it switches gears to prioritize electing Democrats in competitive races. Overall, 93 percent of IEA-connected PAC spending in the 2024 general election supported Democrats.” Also, as the Freedom Foundation reported last year, the IEA paid $25,000 in members’ dues to the Idaho Progressive Investor Network in the 2021-22 tax year.
Complaints allege Idaho school districts’ collection of union dues violates state law
March 23, 2025 // According to Freedom Foundation research, Idaho school districts collected at least $4.4 million in union dues from the paychecks of about 5,000 teachers’ paychecks in 2023 alone. The funds are divided among the district affiliate, the statewide IEA, and the Washington, D.C.-based NEA, which received about $1.1 million of the dues collected that year. Using government records, the complaints document how the NEA spends tens of millions of dollars on political activity and lobbying each year, including $1.8 million spent on Idaho since 2018 including, most recently, a $20,000 contribution to Idaho Students First, a political committee focused on backing the union’s preferred state legislative candidates in the 6th District in the 2024 general election. Bonneville, Caldwell, Coeur d’Alene, Idaho Falls, Kuna, Lake Pend Oreille, Marsing, Middleton, Mullan, New Plymouth, Post Falls, Shelley
Opinion: Congress Must Oppose Big Labor’s “PRO Act” Power Grab
March 14, 2025 // In the 2024 election cycle, labor unions gave nearly 90 percent of their political donations to Democratic Party candidates. For large unions like the National Education Association (NEA), as much as 99 percent of political donations went to Democrats. The PRO Act is a return on investment for the hundreds of millions of dollars that union bosses continue to pour into Democrat coffers.
Study shows how Missouri taxpayers are subsidizing teachers’ unions
March 13, 2025 // While it may not sound controversial, Straka explains the reality is that “union participation in NEOs [new employee orientations] is designed to pressure employees into joining the union, contributing to union political funds, and inculcating pro-union sentiment among employees.” “All of these meetings take place during work hours at the taxpayers’ expense,” he continues. “Missouri lawmakers should ensure that no teacher or public school employee is required by their employer to attend union events, listen to a union sales pitch, or otherwise interact with a union against their will.
Ending the free ride: How school tax dollars subsidize union activity and politics in Missouri
February 26, 2025 // In 2018 and 2020, the NEA and MNEA together spent more than $3.2 million bankrolling high-profile Missouri ballot campaigns over legislative redistricting and government ethics. A component of their effort — which remains on the books to this day — was an amendment to the state constitution that strictly prohibits Missouri state lawmakers and candidates from engaging in political fundraising on state property. Despite seeking to enforce this principle on others, however, teachers unions like the MNEA are one of the few — if not the only — special interest groups that regularly abuse it by routinely taking advantage of taxpayer-funded school resources to support their own political agenda.
Analysis: 93% of Idaho teachers union political spending benefited Democrats in 2024
February 19, 2025 // In short, the IEA may endorse GOP candidates that it finds ideologically compatible if those candidates are going to win anyway but, in competitive races where its support might make a difference, the IEA consistently backs Democrats while simultaneously throwing moral support behind the Democrat candidate in any race involving a Republican it doesn’t think it can work with.
Sanders and Hawley’s Interest Rate Cap Would Ban Their Union Allies’ Credit Cards
February 10, 2025 // They should have checked with their union boss pals before taking such a position. Many major labor unions have deals with banks to offer branded credit cards as a member benefit. Some of them can charge interest rates in excess of the 25 percent rate Sanders finds extortionate, and nearly all of them charge higher than 10 percent. One of the most common credit card partnerships for unions is with Capital One, which offers a Union Plus Mastercard. It is marketed as “Built for Union Members. Backed by Union Members,” and accounts are limited to active or retired union members or their families.
Making the Plains Great Again: Dealing the NEA Defeats in Two States
February 5, 2025 // The Center for Independent Employees’ (CIE) ongoing “Brushfires of Freedom” campaign in Kansas has spilled over into Nebraska, as CIE assisted teachers with removing the National Educators Association from three school districts in the two states at the end of 2024 and beginning of 2025.