Randi Weingarten spent years telling America her union exists to protect teachers and serve students.
A new watchdog report just proved she was running a billion-dollar Democrat slush fund.
Now the receipts are public – and what the NEA and AFT actually did with that billion dollars is a scandal.
Where NEA and AFT Political Spending Actually Went
The National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers moved $669 million through member dues, PAC funds, and political accounts into left-wing causes at the federal level since August 2015.
Fold in state and local affiliates and the total clears $1 billion.
The breakdown tells you everything about who this money was really for.
More than $85 million went directly to Democratic Party entities and their PACs.
That's not education spending. That's a party apparatus.
The State Engagement Fund pulled in more than $60 million. For Our Future Action Fund – a Democrat voter mobilization operation – took another $37 million.
And then it gets worse.
The NEA cut a check for $100,000 to the Trevor Project – the same organization whose chatroom was described as a "Pandora's box" of disturbing content encouraging minors to hide gender transitions from their parents.
The unions paid race theorist Ibram X. Kendi $7,418, cut a $29,250 check to Gender Inclusivity LLC, and funneled $1.7 million to the Midwest Academy – a group training activists for May Day 2026 mobilization.
Rhyen Staley of Defending Education said: "Show me your budget and I will show you what you value; and what the teachers unions value is political power and advancing a left-wing, social justice agenda."
Teachers Unions Spent $135 Million Killing School Choice
Of the $336 million spent at the state and local level, $135.8 million went to kill school choice.
None of it went to hire better teachers, fix crumbling buildings, or buy textbooks.
A hundred and thirty-five million dollars to make sure no family can escape a failing school.
The specific targets tell the story.
The NEA sent $7.2 million to Protect Our Schools Kentucky to fight voucher legislation, another $4.3 million to Support Our Schools Nebraska – which successfully repealed a school choice law – and another $4 million to Colorado's Public Schools Strong to defeat Amendment 80.
Cliff Smith of the North American Values Institute explained the strategy.
"Teachers unions are, in essence, running a quasi-monopoly," Smith said. "Competition is the one thing monopolies can't stand, since it reveals their deficiencies that they'd rather not answer for."
Meanwhile, back in California – the NEA's biggest state operation – 28% of eighth graders read at grade level in 2015.
In 2024, it was still 28%.
Math got worse.
Lance Izumi of the Pacific Research Institute didn't flinch.
"Teacher unions are an ATM machine for the Democratic Party," Izumi said. "Despite the fact that the union spent $106 million in political spending over that ten-year period by the CTA, that didn't move the needle at all. It simply made the unions more powerful and made them kingmakers."
How Randi Weingarten and the Union Machine Survived Janus
The Supreme Court tried to slow this down in 2018.
Janus v. AFSCME ruled 5-4 that public employees cannot be forced to pay union fees as a condition of employment – making every public sector job in America right-to-work.
The prediction was a death spiral for union political power.
It didn't happen.
In the 2024 election cycle alone, the AFT contributed over $16 million to federal candidates – with 99.9% going to Democrats.
The NEA donated over 98% of its political contributions to Democratic candidates.
When you can no longer force teachers to fund you, you make sure the politicians you own write the laws that keep teachers dependent on you anyway.
The Department of Education itself was created in 1980 as a political reward to the NEA after their 1976 presidential endorsement put Jimmy Carter in the White House.
The Heritage Foundation documented it: the department was built to deliver political benefits to the teachers unions, not to improve student outcomes.
That was 46 years ago.
A billion dollars in the last decade alone.
Seventy-five percent of California eighth graders still can't read at grade level.
The money was never for the kids.
It was always for the machine.
Sources:
- Esther Wickham, "Critics question unions after $1B in political spending," The Center Square, May 14, 2026.
- Rhyen Staley and staff, "DivertED: National teachers' unions have contributed over $660M to far-left organizations," Defending Education, April 2026.
- "Watchdog report exposes teachers union 'political machine' funneling more than $1 billion to liberal causes," Fox News, April 29, 2026.
- "The Pork Barrel Politics of the Department of Education," The Heritage Foundation.
- National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2015 and 2024 eighth-grade assessment data.
- Public Union Facts, California Teachers Association political spending data.