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american federation of teachers
'He's Not Kidding,' Advocates Warn as Trump Threatens to Defund Schools for Teaching US History
The Republican presidential nominee is threatening funding if teachers "don't teach what he wants," said one teachers union leader. "That's indoctrination and it's dangerous."
Oct 18, 2024
Education advocates implored voters to take Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's latest comments on public schools on Friday after his appearance on the Fox News morning show "Fox & Friends," where he explained how he would punish schools that teach students accurate U.S. history, including about slavery and racism in the country.
Trump was asked by a viewer who called into the show how he would help students who don't want to attend their local public schools, and said he plans to "let the states run the schools" to allow for more "school choice."
"We're gonna take the Department of Education, we're gonna close it," said the former president, explaining that each state would govern educational policy without federal input—a promise of the right-wing policy agenda, Project 2025, that was co-authored by hundreds of former Trump administration staffers.
"Fox & Friends" co-host Brian Kilmeade said the plan was concerning only because it could allow a "liberal city" or state to decide that schools would teach that the country was "built off the backs of slaves on stolen land, and that curriculum comes in."
"Then we don't send them money," replied Trump.
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) warned, "He's not kidding," pointing to Project 2025, which calls to reduce the role the federal government to "that of a statistics-gathering agency that disseminates information to the states."
"It's in his Project 2025 plan: Trump wants to defund public schools," said the labor union.
The federal government provides public schools with about 13.6% of the funding for public K-12 education. The loss of federal funds could particularly affect schools in low-income communities, resulting in school closures, teacher layoffs, and fewer classroom resources.
Trump's comments touched on the "culture war" promoted by the Republican Party in recent years regarding what they have claimed is the teaching of "critical race theory" (CRT) in public schools. The concept holds that race is a social construct and racism is carried out by legal systems and institutions, through policies like redlining and harsh criminal sentencing laws.
The focus on CRT has resulted in attacks on all "culturally relevant teaching" that takes the experiences of people of color into account and all teachings about the history of the U.S.—particularly about the enslavement of Black people for hundreds of years, Jim Crow laws, the contributions made by racial minorities, and the civil rights movement.
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), said educators' goal is to "teach students how to think, not what to think"—contrary to right-wing claims that the left aims to "indoctrinate" students.
Trump, she said, is "threatening funding if they don't teach what he wants. That's indoctrination and it's dangerous. Our kids deserve better."
Trump is not alone among Republicans in his calls to defund public education. As the Daily Montananreported this week, GOP Senate candidate Tim Sheehy, a multimillionaire who is running to unseat Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mt.) and is leading in recent polls, has spoken about throwing the Department of Education "in the trash can."
Federal funding accounts for 12% of per-student spending in Montana, where nearly 90% of children attend public schools. The state gets $40 million alone to support students with disabilities.
"Fairly significant harm would be implemented in Montana's public schools if we suddenly snapped our fingers and said, 'No more federal funding of education,'" Lance Melton, head of the Montana School Boards Association, told the Daily Montanan.
Lauren Miller, acting communications director for the AFL-CIO, said the former president's comments on Friday fit "a pattern" evident in numerous policies outlined by Trump and Project 2025.
"He'll defund public schools if they don't obey him," said Miller. "He'll fire government workers if they don't obey him. He'll gut the Department of Justice if they don't obey him. He'll deny FEMA funding to states if they don't obey him."
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'Dangerous': Judge Blocks Student Debt Relief Rule That Doesn't Exist Yet
"Opponents of democracy are terrified that they will lose again at the ballot box in November and are rushing to right-wing judges to hamstring democratic governance," said one observer.
Sep 05, 2024
A Republican-appointed U.S. federal judge in Georgia raised eyebrows and objections Thursday after taking what observers called the "unprecedented" step of blocking a rule that hasn't even been finalized in order to stop the Biden administration from implementing a plan to deliver promised debt relief to millions of student borrowers.
U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of Georgia James Randal Hall issued an order blocking the Biden administration's proposed federal student debt relief rule. Hall—an appointee of former President George W. Bush—granted a motion by a coalition of right-wing state attorneys general to preempt the rule's eventual implementation.
"The court is substituting its judgment for those elected to serve the public," American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten said in response to the ruling. "It subverts the democratic process and denies relief to student loan borrowers, many of whom rely on debt relief programs already advanced by the Biden-Harris administration."
"This court's unprecedented decision to block a rule that does not yet exist is not only bad for the 30 million borrowers who were relying on the administration to deliver much-needed relief," she continued. "It's a harbinger of the chaos and corruption right-wing judges seek to force on the American people."
Mike Pierce, executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center—which called the ruling "dangerous and unprecedented"—denounced Hall for preventing the Biden administration from delivering student debt relief "even though no plan has been finalized."
"This is an extraordinary break with precedent and a brazen move by the conservative movement to shift even more power to unelected, unaccountable red-state judges," he said. "Opponents of democracy are terrified that they will lose again at the ballot box in November and are rushing to right-wing judges to hamstring democratic governance."
"This is the clearest sign yet that Project 2025 is already terrorizing student loan borrowers through a slow-moving judicial coup," Pierce added, referring to a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right takeover of the federal government—which critics warn would worsen the U.S. student debt crisis.
Biden's proposal would forgive some or all student debt for around 30 million borrowers who have been repaying undergraduate loans for at least 20 years, or graduate loans for 25 years.
Hall's order is based on what he said was the plaintiffs' "substantial likelihood of success on the merits given the rule's lack of statutory authority" and U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona's "attempt to implement a rule contrary to normal procedures."
"This is especially true in light of the recent rulings across the country striking down similar federal student loan forgiveness plans," he added.
The U.S. Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority last year struck down Biden's initial plan to relieve up to $20,000 in federal scholastic debt for around 40 million borrowers, and last month the justices kept in place a sweeping suspension of the administration's Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) program, which aims to lower monthly repayments and hasten loan forgiveness.
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The Right-Wing Group Backing a New Anti-Union Strategy in Florida
A Miami-Dade school teachers’ vote is a test case for a novel experiment: whether a group dedicated to dismantling public sector unions can successfully seed a competing union.
Aug 15, 2024
Starting Tuesday, public school teachers in one of the country’s largest school districts began voting on whether to keep their current union—a longstanding local affiliate of a national teachers union—or join a newly formed employee organization that has the financial backing of a notorious anti-union advocacy group.
The vote is a test case for a novel experiment: whether a group dedicated to dismantling public sector unions can successfully seed a competing union. If it works, some worry that existing unions may be forced to ward off expensive and time-consuming copycat efforts elsewhere.
The Freedom Foundation, a right-wing group based in Washington state, is financing and promoting the new employee organization in Florida. Called the Miami-Dade Education Coalition (MDEC), it was founded to compete with the longstanding teachers’ labor union, United Teachers of Dade (UTD), an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT).
The Freedom Foundation’s latest effort in Florida is tied to the right’s goal of busting unions throughout the country as a way of defunding progressive political campaigns, starting with those representing public sector employees.
The story began in spring 2023 with SB 256, a bill passed by the Florida legislature that raised the membership threshold for certain public sector unions to 60%. Under the new law, if less than 60% of eligible members have signed up for the union, it is vulnerable to automatic decertification.
Notably, the unions that were exempted from this new, higher membership threshold—representing corrections officers, police, and firefighters—all support Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who fought for the anti-union legislation.
“Tallahassee didn’t have a problem with unions playing politics as long as the politics were in favor of the governor and Republicans,” said Jim DeFede of CBS News Miami in an interview with an MDEC representative. “The unions that endorsed DeSantis got exempted from this bill.”
In the year since the law passed, more than 50,000 public employees have already lost union representation. Just this summer, all eight adjunct faculty unions at Florida’s public universities have been decertified.
The Miami-Dade teachers’ union avoided outright decertification by demonstrating a threshold of at least 30% interest from eligible members. However, their failure to reach the 60% threshold triggered the current election asking members to vote on which organization they want to represent them.
That’s where the Freedom Foundation comes in. After lobbying for the bill, the organization has been working for the past year and a half to get teachers in Miami-Dade County to choose its own pet organization, MDEC, over the UTD.
Ballots started to be mailed out Tuesday, according to the Public Employees Relations Commission (PERC). Teachers have until September 24 to cast their votes.
“Unlike UTD, MDEC’s founding principles protect our independence from outside affiliations,” the organization contends. “MDEC is its own legal entity, and no outside organization has control over our local union.”
According to an FAQ on its website, MDEC insists that it is accepting “outside resources” from the Freedom Foundation “solely for the duration of the campaign.”
Last month, the Freedom Foundation brought together public school teachers from across the country to teach them how to decertify their unions and keep “the socialist dogma of their leadership [out of] our children’s classrooms.”
MDEC filed for registration with the state labor board last October, and received approval in February; one of the signatories on behalf of MDEC was Allison Beattie, the Freedom Foundation’s director of labor relations.
Another signatory was Matthew Hargraves, who previously served as an attorney for an unaffiliated teachers union in Florida—Santa Rosa Professional Educators, which broke away from the Florida Education Association.
In January, MDEC held a press conference to reiterate that it’s a legitimate union.
The president and co-founder is Brent Urbanik. In an interview with CBS News Miami, he agreed that the Freedom Foundation is “bankrolling” MDEC but did not disclose how much money the foundation has spent on the effort. Instead, he confirmed that it is paying for all of the mailings, canvassers, and legal expenses involved in getting the alternative “local union” off the ground.
Urbanik insisted that “Freedom Foundation is not necessarily anti-union.”
The other co-founder is Shawn Beightol, who ran for UTD president twice. Media reports have claimed that the Freedom Foundation proposed the idea of an alternative union, which has been corroborated by CBS News Miami.
“The think tank proposed replacing these entrenched, agenda-driven unions with local-only ones that focused on local issues [and] Miami-Dade educators were ‘elated’ with the idea,” according to The Lion.
The Freedom Foundation’s latest effort in Florida is tied to the right’s goal of busting unions throughout the country as a way of defunding progressive political campaigns, starting with those representing public sector employees. These coordinated attacks—bankrolled by billionaires—largely culminated in the 2018 Janus Supreme Court decision, which ruled that public employees are not required to pay for the costs of union representation.
Since the Janus decision, the Freedom Foundation has pushed state-level legislation that makes it harder for teachers to pay union dues, used what some union leaders have called “federal mail fraud” to trick members into leaving their unions, and aggressively pursued access to personal information in order to contact union members directly with anti-union campaign materials.
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