Free Republic

President Biden vowed on Friday that the federal government would cover the cost of rebuilding the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore – and that the work would be done by union labor, potentially setting up a funding fight with the conservative wing of the House of Representatives. Biden has promised from the outset that the federal government would pay for the bridge to be rebuilt. His comments on Friday came after the House Freedom Caucus — the conservative wing of the House of Representatives — released a series of conditions for federal funding for the bridge. The conditions include...

I'd think Joe Biden has to be sitting around wondering how he managed to put himself in his current position, but I'm not sure he even has the cognitive ability to process how bad things are. We've all seen the polls, which will likely tighten in a general election, but other factors are at play as well. ... The latest flashing red light comes courtesy of the National Education Association (NEA), the nation's largest teachers union. A far-left entity that has long served as a lynchpin for Democrat politicians, its members are now demanding Biden show support for Palestinian terrorists...

Utah ranked fourth in the nation for states with the largest political shift leftward between 2000 and 2020, according to research by a Brigham Young University sociologist.Comparing presidential election vote shares from 2000 to 2020, Utah had one of the largest swings leftward in the United States — behind only Vermont, Colorado and Alaska, according to Jacob Rugh, associate professor of sociology at Brigham Young University.Utah went from giving President George W. Bush 66.8% of the vote, compared to 26.5% for Vice President Al Gore in 2000; (R+40) to President Donald Trump receiving 58.1% of the vote and President Joe...

I apologize for being gross, but it's necessary. You have to be shocked into recognizing the moral horror of what a part of the nation's largest teacher's union is doing. It is unspeakable, but we have to speak about it. The most effective work that the irreplaceable Christopher Rufo does is simply to get documents from institutions, and post them in full to the web, so ordinary people can see what kind of corrupt, racist or otherwise depraved people run these institutions. His latest is from the LGBTQ+ caucus of the National Education Association (NEA), the country's largest teachers union,...

When teaching about U.S. elections or politics, many educators will strive for neutrality. They may insist these discussions have no place in the classroom, while others argue that standardization and a lack of time make them a non-starter. Even if there was an opening, the slightest hint of bias could attract the ire of an administrator or parent. In this hyper-polarized political climate, that's a line that’s easy to stumble across. All this neutrality or avoidance may work for the teacher - but what about the student? Alyssa Hadley Dunn, Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at Michigan State University, believes...

Parents in a Colorado school district expressed outrage after a report said the local teachers union sent out an email to its members instructing them to get rid of evidence of students' transgender information, according to a CBS report. The Jefferson County Education Association (JCEA) email explained to teachers that if they surveyed students on their gender identities, that information should not be stored in records, in a CBS report headlined, "Controversy erupts in Jefferson County after the teachers union tells educators to destroy evidence of student surveys regarding gender identity." The email said, "if you do a questionnaire, please...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSQ9P5MJXiM: NEA Gets Savagely EXPOSED For Illegal Funding Of Voter Fraud During 2020 Election. Last week former President Donald Trump was indicted in Fulton County for racketeering charges pertaining to the 2020 presidential election. Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich recently praised the NEA for its work with teachers. However, this video exposes how the NEA used dues paid by its members to support radical activist organizations during the 2020 presidential election. The host in this video makes a great case about how the NEA funnelled money to organizations owned by Michelle Obama and Stacey Abrams and George Soros that...

One of the nation's largest teachers unions in America has reportedly offered instruction to teachers on how to insert lessons on gender identity into classroom discussions, according to a right-leaning public policy institute. The Defense of Freedom Institute, founded by two former Trump administration Department of Education officials, released a report earlier this month describing the topics promoted by the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association. Before its Together Educating America's Children (TEACH) conference in July, DFI noted that AFT released a resolution on LGBT issues that touted "age-appropriate and inclusive" bathroom and locker room policies. In...

National Education Association is the most evil labor organization on the planet. All of the teachers’ unions are evil, but the NEA is the biggest, ... The teachers’ unions weren’t able to hide their nastiness from the public ... They did what they’ve always done — put their interests above those of the students and, as we are now finding out, doomed those kids to being forever behind. One of the more bizarre things we saw back then was the far-left regime in Chicago battling with the teachers’ union there to let the kids go back to school. Then-Mayor Lori...

Property-tax relief? Hardly. Proposition HH on this fall’s statewide ballot is really about growing government. And it attempts to do that by piggybacking on public outrage over skyrocketing property tax bills. The proposal’s purported property-tax “relief” — served up by Gov. Jared Polis and his legislative allies as one part of their dizzyingly complicated scheme — is a ruse. As with every attempt to play politics with a crisis, there’s a hidden agenda. And that agenda is to snooker Colorado voters into letting the state keep and spend billions of dollars in surplus tax revenue that otherwise would have to...

Chicago Public Schools has a school utilization problem. Over 34% are less than half full, 57% are underutilized, and 5% are overcrowded. Just 35% are at ideal capacity. The Chicago Teachers Union is preventing solutions. About 322,000 Chicago Public Schools students are set to return Aug. 21, with more than 1 in 3 students entering buildings less than half full. Nearly empty school buildings eat resources that should go towards students’ educations. Those educations are lacking when just 14% of CPS 3rd through 8th grade students from low-income families met proficiency standards in reading and 9% in math. School capacity...

Columbia Law journals are delaying admissions decisions in the wake of the Court's landmark ruling. The move highlights how the verdict could have implications beyond undergraduate admissions. Law journals at Columbia University Law School are delaying their masthead decisions in the wake of the Supreme Court's ruling last week outlawing race-based college admissions, a sign that the ban on affirmative action is already having an effect beyond undergraduate programs. The law school's office of student services, which coordinates applications to all journals including the flagship Columbia Law Review, said Sunday that journal acceptances had been postponed until the school could...

...The education system’s failure to prepare non-white students for college admissions on the merits is not just an accident of Democratic one-party rule. It is a feature of Democratic machine politics. The two major teachers unions — the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) — tell Democrats to jump; Democrats lack the spine to do anything but ask, “How high?”...

California’s statewide teachers’ union sent a letter June 27 to the Chino Valley Unified School board criticizing its recent decision to allow only government flags on school property—and threatening to take legal action against the board if the policy is not reversed. The board voted 4–1 June 15 to allow only the California and U.S. flags on school property. The California Teachers Association—with more than 300,000 members—in partnership with local union Associated Chino Teachers alleges in the letter the decision violates teachers’ right to free speech under the First Amendment as well as a state employment law. The union also...

A growing number of states are adopting a comprehensive new type of school choice program that would pose a threat to public schools if many students were to leave them for a private education. Eight states—including Arizona, Florida, Indiana, and West Virginia—have approved “universal” or near-universal school choice laws since 2021. They open the door completely to school choice by making all students, including those already in private schools and from wealthy families, eligible for about $7,000 to $10,000 in state funding each year for their education. What’s more, most of these states have also enacted education savings accounts, or...

There are many reasons why so many US public schools remained persistently closed for well over a year, but at the top of the list is Randi Weingarten. She is the President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and served as the self-appointed and media-anointed spokesperson for teachers’ unions throughout the pandemic. Weingarten appeared regularly across national media outlets for well over two years, relentlessly touting the dangers of public schools and the risk to teachers from in-person instruction. She also painted anyone who advocated for schools to open as heartless and cruel. Now that it’s become clear what...

As Colorado kids struggle to recoup learning losses post-pandemic, teachers unions keep proving that’s not their priority. Standing at the center is the state’s most prominent teachers union — the Colorado Education Association. At the CEA’s statewide conference on April 22, the organization — which claims to represent teachers — took a brazen, ideological stance when it passed a resolution attacking capitalism for “inherently exploit(ing) children, public schools, land, labor, and resources.” Never mind how America’s free enterprise system enables businesses and homeowners to pour billions of dollars into our state’s education system through taxation, or the philanthropic contributions of...

The nation’s largest teachers union recommends that educators begin teaching the concepts of preferred personal pronouns and gender identity starting in pre-kindergarten. "When you look at elementary school students, many people think they are too young to talk about pronouns,” said panelist Matthew Powell, a member of the National Education Association’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Committee, during a webinar last summer. “However, by asking students their [preferred] pronouns at a young age,” Powell added, so-called education support professionals “can make room for students who may be exploring gender identity and show everyone [that] gender identity should not just be...

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis has signaled that he will make a priority of passing a long-debated proposal that would prevent teachers from having union dues deducted from their paychecks. DeSantis supported the proposal Monday during a speech in Orlando, describing it as “paycheck protection legislation.” The Florida Education Association and other teachers unions backed DeSantis’ Democratic challenger, Charlie Crist, in the Nov. 8 election, with Miami-Dade County teachers union leader Karla Hernandez serving as Crist’s running mate. DeSantis also has battled unions in recent years about issues such as reopening schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. During what was described...

The nation’s largest teachers unions, the National Education Association (NEA) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), declined by at least 59,000 members during the 2021-2022 school year, according to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) disclosure reports. The NEA, the nation’s largest teachers union, lost 40,107 members while the AFT, the nation’s second largest teachers union, declined by 19,078, according to the DOL reports. The decline comes as public schools added 95,000 educators from September 2021 to 2022. ... The decline in the NEA’s membership leaves the union with 2,496,627 million educators, the lowest union membership since 2006, 74...